Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/328613 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] Economies [ISSN:] 2227-7099 [Volume:] 10 [Issue:] 12 [Article No.:] 313 [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] 1-16
Publisher: 
MDPI, Basel
Abstract: 
Using cross country data, we explore the role of linguistic structures for the financial development of countries. Specially, we investigate if future time reference (FTR), the requirement of an obligatory future tense marking in languages, matters for financial development or not. Our results show that countries speaking weak FTR language or a language not needing a dedicated future tense marking have enhanced financial development relative to countries speaking strong FTR language. Discounting the future less or having a connection between the present and the future-characteristics of weak FTR languages-has implications for caring about saving and investment, having efficient property rights, protection of shareholders and cost of acquiring information. Our results are robust to multiple measures of financial development and inclusion of determinants of the same. Finally, results show that weak FTR language speaking countries benefit more when their financial development is low.
Subjects: 
discounting future
financial development
future time reference
linguistic structures
JEL: 
O11
Z10
D53
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.