We use a newly available measure of linguistic distance developed by the German Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to explain heterogeneity in language skills of immigrants. This measure is based on an automatical algorithm comparing pronunciation and vocabulary of language...

This study examines the returns to foreign and local language skills of immigrants in the Spanish labor market. Different sources of endogeneity are addressed by deriving a set of novel instruments for language proficiency through a measure of linguistic dissimilarity. Using cross-sectional data...

This study quantifies the disadvantage in the formation of literacy skills of immigrants that arises from the linguistic distance between mother tongue and host country language. Combining unique cross-country data on literacy scores with information on the linguistic distance between languages,...

This paper uses data from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to study the returns to language skills of child and adult migrants in the US labor market. We employ an instrumental variable strategy, which exploits differences in language acquisition profiles between immigrants from English-...

This paper theoretically analyzes and empirically investigates the importance of local interaction between individuals of different linguistic groups for the provision of public goods at the national level. Depending on whether local interaction mitigates or reinforces antagonism towards other...

This article investigates the macro-level drivers of adult-age language learning. We construct a new dataset that covers German language learning in 77 countries (including Germany) for 1992-2006. Fixed-effects regressions show that language learning in the EU is strongly associated with...

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...

In this paper we argue that different preferences in a decentralized system lead to under provision of public goods. We analyze the provision of public primary education in nineteenth-century Prussia which was characterized by a linguistically polarized society and a decentralized education...

This paper investigates the economic returns to language skills and bilingualism. The analysis is staged in Kazakhstan, a multi-ethnic country with complex ethnic settlement patterns that has switched its official state language from Russian to Kazakh. Using two newly assembled data sets, we...

The essay gives an overview of how language planning and language policy can be motivated and analyzed by economic methods. It is discussed what type of value language-related goods possess and what type of goods they are. Properties like degrees of rivalry, exclusion, and shielding and how they...