Foreign Languages and Trade

Jan Fidrmuc and Jarko Fidrmuc

CEDI Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University

Abstract: Cultural factors and especially common languages are well-known determinants of trade. By contrast, the knowledge of foreign languages was not explored in the literature so far. We combine traditional gravity models with data on fluency in the main languages used in EU and candidate countries. We show that widespread knowledge of languages is an important determinant of foreign trade, with English playing an especially important role. Other langauges (French, German, and Russian) play an important role mainly in particular regions. Furthermore, we argue that the effect of foreign langauges on trade may be non-linear. The robustness of our results is confirmed by quantile regressions.

Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2009-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/342725/CEDI_09-03.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/342725/CEDI_09-03.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/342725/CEDI_09-03.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Foreign Languages and Trade (2014)
Working Paper: Foreign Languages and Trade (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:edb:cedidp:09-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEDI Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University CEDI, Brunel University,West London,UB8 3PH,United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarmistha Pal ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).