Premium
Incentives, technology and the shift to year‐round dairying in late nineteenth‐century Denmark 1
Author(s) -
HENRIKSEN INGRID,
O'ROURKE KEVIN H.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2005.00312.x
Subject(s) - danish , incentive , seasonality , economics , empirical evidence , exhibition , agricultural economics , profit (economics) , demographic economics , economy , geography , market economy , philosophy , linguistics , statistics , mathematics , archaeology , epistemology , microeconomics
This article uses monthly trade data to document the decline in the seasonality in Danish butter exports that occurred from the 1880s onwards. This decline contrasted with steady or increasing seasonality elsewhere. Monthly butter prices in Britain, Denmark, and Ireland show that the incentives to shift into winter dairying were particularly high in the 1880s and 1890s; however, this cannot on its own explain the Danish shift, since our price data show that farmers elsewhere faced winter premia that were every bit as high as the Danish premia. The crucial factor in Denmark was the generation of empirical knowledge by the private and public sectors systematically analysing empirical evidence; the rapid diffusion of this knowledge in a highly educated society via lectures, exhibitions, written materials, and by institutions such as the new cooperative sector; and a willingness to absorb this knowledge by profit‐maximizing farmers.