Tracks to Modernity
How railway expansion shaped economic development and civic institutions in 19th-century Denmark. Second R&R at Economic History Review.
Status: 2nd R&R at Economic History Review (received 2026-04-22)
Railroads reshaped the economic geography of 19th-century Denmark — but did they also reshape its civic fabric? This paper uses the staggered rollout of the Danish railway network as a natural experiment to estimate causal effects on economic development and the emergence of civic institutions.
The analysis combines station-level variation in rail access with rich historical records on local economic activity, population, and associational life. The findings speak to the long-run complementarities between physical infrastructure, markets, and institutional development.