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

TY - UNPB

T1 - The Strange Birth of Liberal Denmark

T2 - Danish trade protection and the growth of the dairy industry since the mid-nineteenth century

AU - Henriksen, Ingrid

AU - Lampe, Markus

AU - Sharp, Paul Richard

N1 - JEL classification: N5, N7

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - mejerier

KW - Danmark

KW - dairies

KW - Denmark

KW - tariffs

KW - cheese

M3 - Working paper

BT - The Strange Birth of Liberal Denmark

PB - Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

ER -