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

Boberg-Fazlic, Nina; Sharp, Paul

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

No 155, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

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: Dairying; immigration; knowledge spillovers; technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 N11 N31 N51 O33 Q16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cse, nep-gro, nep-knm and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hes:wpaper:0155

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