Immigrant Communities and Knowledge Spillovers: Danish-Americans and the Development of the Dairy Industry in the United States

Nina Boberg-Fazlic and Paul Sharp

No 307181, Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University from Center for Growth and Opportunity

Abstract: Despite the growing literature on the impact of immigration, little is known about the role existing migrant settlements can play for knowledge transmission. We present a case which can illustrate this important mechanism and hypothesize that nineteenth century Danish-American communities helped spread knowledge on modern dairying to rural America. From around 1880, Denmark developed rapidly and by 1890 it was a world-leading dairy producer. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, and data taken from the US census and Danish emigration archives, we find that counties with more Danes in 1880 subsequently both specialized in dairying and used more modern practices.

Keywords: International Development; Industrial Organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cse and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/307181/files/I ... ledge-Spillovers.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Immigrant Communities and Knowledge Spillovers: Danish Americans and the Development of the Dairy Industry in the United States (2024)
Working Paper: Immigrant Communities and Knowledge Spillovers: DanishAmericans and the Development of the Dairy Industry in the United States (2019)
Working Paper: Immigrant Communities and Knowledge Spillovers: Danish-Americans and the Development of the Dairy Industry in the United States (2019)
Working Paper: Immigrant Communities and Knowledge Spillovers: Danish-Americans and the Development of the Dairy Industry in the United States (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:cgouta:307181

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.307181

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University from Center for Growth and Opportunity Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search (aesearch@umn.edu).