TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Galor, Oded
AU  - Özak, Ömer
AU  - Sarid, Assaf
        TI  - Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures
        PY  - 2016/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10379
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp10379
        AB  - This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in agricultural productivity, and more hierarchical society, are at the root of existing cross-language variations in the presence of the future tense, grammatical gender, and politeness distinctions. Moreover, the research suggests that while language structures have largely reflected the coding of past human experience and in particular the range of ancestral cultural traits in society, they independently affected human behavior and economic outcomes.
        KW  - comparative development
KW  - cultural evolution
KW  - language structure
KW  - future tense
KW  - politeness distinctions
KW  - grammatical gender
KW  - human capital
KW  - education
        ER  -