The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language

In this handbook, Victor Ginsburgh and ShlomoWeber bring together methodological, theoretical, and empirical studies in theeconomics of language in a single framework of linguistic diversity thatreflects the history and contemporary study of the topic. The impact of linguisticdiversity on economic outcomes and public policies has been studied not only byeconomists and other social scientists in the contemporary era, but all the wayback to the 19th century by geographer and naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt,who emphasized the importance of language in the framework of culturalexperience.

This interdependence of language and culture isreflected in the chapters in this handbook, which have been written by leadingeconomists, linguists, and political scientists from universities in the UnitedStates, Australia, Russia, Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium,Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The contributionsare divided into four parts. Part I examines linguistic concepts that forge commonground between economists, political scientists, sociologists, and linguists,and introduces the notion of linguistic proximity extensively utilized invarious chapters of the volume. Part II assesses the impact of languages onmarket interactions, including international trade, patent protection,migration, and use of languages in ancient and modern business environments.Part III focuses on the link between linguistic policies and economicdevelopment, including the analysis of regional development in Asia, Africa, Europeand Russia. Part IV addresses issues of globalization, minority languages, and theprotection of linguistic rights in multilingual societies.

Victor Ginsburgh is Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Brussels, Belgium. He is an author and editor of numerous books and has published papers in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior and other leading journals. His most recent publications include the Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture (2006 and 2013, co-edited with David Throsby) and How Many Languages Do We Need? (2011, with Shlomo Weber).

Shlomo Weber is Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA, and Academic Head at the Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions, New Economic School, Moscow, Russia. His areas of expertise are game theory, public and political economics. He received various prizes, including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize for outstanding foreign scientists and the Megagrant Prize from the Russian Ministry of Science and Education. He recently published The Oxford Handbook of the Russian Economy (2013 in English, and 2014 in Russian, co-edited with Michael Alexeev).