Foreign language learnings: An econometric analysis

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. All four affect the broad decision to learn but the last two also point to the choice of the particular language to learn. Literacy promotes learning in general while the world population of speakers of the native language 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 that specific language. Trade may well deserve more emphasis than the other three factors (literacy rate, linguistic distance, and world population of native speakers), not only for its high significance, but also 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.