The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language

Do the languages people speak influence their economic decisions and social behavior in multilingual societies? This Handbook brings together scholars from various disciplines to examine the links and tensions between economics and language to find the delicate balance between monetary benefits and psychological costs of linguistic dynamics.

This Handbook provides an innovative study which examines the interplay between economic decisions and social behaviour in multilingual societies It draws on the work of leading scholars from a variety of disciplines including economists, linguists and political scientists

Autorentext
Victor Ginsburgh is Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Brussels, Belgium. He is an author and editor of numerous books and has published papers in the American Economic Review , Econometrica , Journal of Political Economy , Journal of Economic Perspectives , Journal of Economic Theory , Games and Economic Behavior and other leading journals. His most recent publications include the Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture (2006 and 2013, co-edited with David Throsby) and How Many Languages Do We Need? (2011, with Shlomo Weber).

Shlomo Weber is Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA, and Academic Head at the Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions, New Economic School, Moscow, Russia. His areas of expertise are game theory, public and political economics. He received various prizes, including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize for outstanding foreign scientists and the Megagrant Prize from the Russian Ministry of Science and Education. He recently published The Oxford Handbook of the Russian Economy (2013 in English, and 2014 in Russian, co-edited with Michael Alexeev).

Klappentext
In this handbook Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber bring together methodological, theoretical, and empirical studies in the economics of language in a single framework of linguistic diversity that reflects the history and contemporary study of the topic. The impact of linguistic diversity on economic outcomes and public policies has been studied not only by economists and other social scientists in the contemporary era, but all the way back to the 19th century by geographer and naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, who emphasized the importance of language in the framework of cultural experience.

This interdependence of language and culture is reflected through the chapters in this handbook which have been written by leading economists, linguists and political scientists from universities in the United States, Australia, Russia, Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The contributions are divided into four parts. Part I examines linguistic concepts that forge common ground between economists, political scientists, sociologists and linguists, and introduces the notion of linguistic proximity extensively utilized in various chapters of the volume. Part II assesses the impact of languages on market interactions, including international trade, patent protection, migration, and use of languages in ancient and modern business environments. Part III focuses on the link between linguistic policies and economic development, including the analysis of regional development in Asia, Africa, Europe and Russia. Part IV addresses issues of globalization, minority languages and the protection of linguistic rights in multilingual societies.

Inhalt

Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber, Introduction
Part I. Linguistic Diversity: Origins and Measurement
Chapter 1. Nigel Fabb, Linguistic Theory, Linguistic Diversity and Whorfian Economics
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Abstract linguistic form, and the rules and conditions which govern it
1.3 Linguistic diversity: An illustrative comparison between two languages
1.4 Theories of linguistic diversity
1.5 Whorfian psychology and economics: Causal relations between language and thought
1.6 Non-whorfian proposals that language influences thought
1.7 Conclusion
1.8 References
Chapter 2. Andrew Smith, Dynamic Models of Language Evolution. The Linguistic Perpective
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Language diversity
2.3 Language change
2.4 Dynamic models of language
2.5 Conclusion
2.6 References
Chapter 3. Andrew John, Dynamic Models of Language Evolution. The Economic Perspective
3.1 Introduction
3.2 How economic forces can influence language dynamics
3.3 Conclusion
3.4 References
Chapter 4. Mark Leikin, What Do We Learn from Neurolinguistics?
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Terms, definitions and research areas
4.3 Brain and language
4.4 Evolution of brain and language relationships
4.5 Development of brain and language relationships in childhood
4.6 The neurolinguistics of bilingualism
4.7 Conclusions
4.8 References
Chapter 5. Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber, Linguistic Distances and Ethno-linguistic Fractionalisation and Disenfranchisement Indices
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Languages, dialects and trade languages
5.3 Distances between languages
5.4 The effect of linguistic distances on economic outcomes
5.5 Linguistic distances between groups
5.6 Fractionalization and disenfranchisement indices
5.7 References
Chapter 6. Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg, Ancestry, Language and Culture
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Ancestry
6.3 Culture
6.4 Ancestry and culture: A simple conceptual framework
6.5 Ancestry and culture: Empirical evidence
6.6 Conclusion
6.7 References
Appendix: Derivations of the results in Section 6.4
Chapter 7. Efthymios Athanasiou, Juan Moreno-Ternero and Shlomo Weber, Language Learning and Communicative Benefits
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Communicative benefits
7.3 Efficiency
7.4 Efficient choices of official languages
7.5 Conclusion
7.6 References
Chapter 8. Niall Bond and Victor Ginsburgh, Language and Emotion
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Emotions and the polyglot
8.3 Choosing languages within language communities
8.4 'Colonized' writers
8.5 Migrating writers
8.6 Between languages: Nabokov, Green and Tabucchi
8.7 'Denying' the language in which they wrote: Kafka and Derrida
8.8 Concluding remarks
Part II. Languages and Markets
Chapter 9. Peter Egger, and Farid Toubal, Common Spoken Languages and International Trade
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Common native and spoken languages on the globe and their measures
9.3 A trade economists stylized view on languages
9.4 Empirical results
9.5 Conclusions
9.6 References
Chapter 10. Nigel Holden, Economic Exchange and Business Language in the Ancient World. An Exploratory Review
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Language considerations
10.3 Context of trade and antiquity
10.4 The written word
10.5 The spoken language of business in the Ancient World
10.6 Commercial terms in various languages of the Ancient World
10.7 The businessman as unsavoury personage in Greek and Latin literature
10.8 Latin: Not just a lingua franca
10.9 Conclusions
10.10 References
Chapter 11. Susanne Tietze, Nigel Hoden and Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen, Language Use in Multinational Corporations. Towards a Topography of Languages, Special Languages and Corporate Sociolects
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Cities and the MNC
11.3 Research on languageaspects of the MNC: A pragmatic perspective
11.4 Linguascapes, pragmatic spaces and the topography of language
11.5 Discussion
11.6 Conclusion
11.7 References
Chapter 12. Alicia Adsera and Mariola Pyltikova, Language and …