The Strange Birth of Liberal Denmark: Danish trade protection and the growth of the dairy industry since the mid-nineteenth century

Ingrid Henriksen, Markus Lampe and Paul Sharp
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Ingrid Henriksen: Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

No 10-04, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: The usual story of the “first era of globalization” at the end of the nineteenth century sees Denmark as something as an outlier: a country which, like Britain, resisted the globalization backlash in the wake of the inflow of cheap grain from the New World, but where agriculture, rather than going into decline, in fact flourished. Key to the success of Danish agriculture was an early diversification towards dairy production. We dispute this simple story which sees Denmark as something of a liberal paragon. Denmark’s success owed much to a prudent use of trade policy which favoured dairy production. Moreover, this favouritism continued even after a more general movement to free trade in the 1860s. Using micro-level data from individual dairies, we quantify the implied subsidy to dairy production from the tariffs, and demonstrate that this in many cases ensured the profitability of individual dairies.

Keywords: dairies; Denmark; protection; tariffs; cheese (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N5 N7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2010-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The strange birth of liberal Denmark: Danish trade protection and the growth of the dairy industry since the mid‐nineteenth century (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1004

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