%0 Report
        %A Sutter, Matthias
%A Angerer, Silvia
%A Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela
%A Lergetporer, Philipp
        %T The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Children's Intertemporal Choices
        %D 2015
        %8 2015 Sep
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 9383
        %U https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp9383
        %X According to Chen's (2013) linguistic-savings hypothesis, languages which grammatically separate the future and the present (like English or Italian) induce less future-oriented behavior than languages in which speakers can refer to the future by using present tense (like German). We complement Chen's approach with experimentally elicited time preference data from a bilingual city in Northern Italy. We find that German-speaking primary school children are about 46% more likely than Italian-speaking children to delay gratification in an intertemporal choice experiment. The difference remains significant in several robustness checks and when controlling for a broad range of factors, including risk attitudes, IQ or family background.
        %K experiment
%K language
%K intertemporal choice
%K children