Language and decision making: Board members and the investment in the future

Florian Rottner

No 421, University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics from University of Goettingen, Department of Economics

Abstract: Recent research has shown that the grammatical representation of the future in languages influences how future-oriented an individual behaves in her private life. In this paper, I examine whether this effect of language characteristics on a person's behaviour is also evident in the business world. I test the hypothesis that companies with board members whose native language grammatically separates the present from the future are less future-oriented. I find significant effects of the inflectional marking of the future in one language on the growth rate of a company's intangible assets, which I use as a benchmark for its future orientation.

Keywords: Language Structure; Future Tense; Research and Development Activities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O30 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:cegedp:421

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