Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures

Oded Galor, Ömer Özak and Assaf Sarid

No 10379, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in agricultural productivity, and more hierarchical society, are at the root of existing cross-language variations in the presence of the future tense, grammatical gender, and politeness distinctions. Moreover, the research suggests that while language structures have largely reflected the coding of past human experience and in particular the range of ancestral cultural traits in society, they independently affected human behavior and economic outcomes.

Keywords: comparative development; cultural evolution; language structure; future tense; politeness distinctions; grammatical gender; human capital; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 J24 O1 O10 O11 O12 O40 O43 O44 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures (2017)
Working Paper: Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures (2016)
Working Paper: Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures (2016)
Working Paper: Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures
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