Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/102227 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 4923
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
The paper is devoted to an econometric analysis of learning foreign languages in all parts of the world. Our sample covers 193 countries and 13 important languages. Four factors significantly explain learning, two of which affect the broad decision to learn, while two concern as well the choice of the particular language to learn. Literacy generally promotes learning while the world population of speakers of the native language generally discourages it. Trade with speakers of a specific language prompts learning of that specific language while the linguistic distance between the home and the foreign language discourages learning of the specific language. Trade is highly significant and may well deserve more emphasis than the other three key variables (literacy rate, linguistic distance, and world population of native speakers) because its direction can change faster and by a larger order of magnitude. Controlling for individual acquired languages, including English, is of no particular importance.
Subjects: 
language learning
language and trade
English as a global language
JEL: 
F10
F20
Z00
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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