Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 10379

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Education and Economic Development ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Economic Development: General ; Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development ; Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development ; Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General ; Institutions and Growth ; Environment and Growth ; Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology: General
• Subject: comparative development ; cultural evolution ; language structure ; future tense ; politeness distinctions ; grammatical gender ; human capital ; education

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Galor, Oded ; Özak, Ömer ; Sarid, Assaf
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/149238
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET