Culture, Conflict and Cooperation Revisited: A New Interpretation of the Evidence from Irish Dairying

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2012

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Abstract

"Recent work has used pre-independence Ireland as an illustration of how a lack of social capital due to conflict can impact on economic performance. It is claimed, based on a simple econometric analysis, that conflict hindered the development of cooperative creameries in Ireland which were to be of such importance in more successful economies, such as Denmark. We argue however that the measure of cooperation used, the cooperatives as a share of all creameries, is flawed, since it is only low in the south of the island because of the historic importance of Munster as a centre of the dairy industry, and this just happens to be where the measure of social capital, so-called outrages, is highest. We demonstrate that controlling for the uniqueness of Munster shows the relationship to be spurious."

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cooperatives, social capital

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