The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Children's Intertemporal Choices
48 Pages Posted: 28 Oct 2015
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The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Children's Intertemporal Choices
The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Children's Intertemporal Choices
Date Written: September 30, 2015
Abstract
According to Chen’s (2013) linguistic-savings hypothesis, languages which grammatically separate the future and the present (like English or Italian) induce less future-oriented behavior than languages in which speakers can refer to the future by using present tense (like German). We complement Chen’s approach with experimentally elicited time preference data from a bilingual city in Northern Italy. We find that German-speaking primary school children are about 46% more likely than Italian-speaking children to delay gratification in an intertemporal choice experiment. This result is robust when controlling for risk attitudes, IQ, family background, or when considering other languages.
Keywords: intertemporal choice, language, children, experiment
JEL Classification: C910, D030, D900
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation