Cultural Integration and Export Variety Overlap across Countries

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper assesses the role of a larger degree of common language use between the populations of two countries on the so-called extensive product margin of trade. We focus on the overlap of products exported or imported between any pair of countries. The results suggest that the effect of varying aspects of sharing a common language on the variety overlap is both positive and important. The effect of sharing a common spoken language exceeds the one of common native language, implying that a larger overlap in language proficiency is quantitatively more important than a higher cultural proximity. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayJEL-Code: C310, F140, F150, Z100.

Heterogeneous immigrants, exports and foreign direct investment: The role of language skills

“…While our focus on the interaction between immigrants and common language skills at the country‐pair level is novel (to the best of our knowledge), we draw on several strands of literature. First, irrespective of migrant stocks, many studies have found that a common language increases bilateral trade (Egger & Lassmann, ) or FDI (Selmier & Oh, ); recent work such as Egger and Lassmann () presents robust evidence on the direction of causality from language to trade…”

Heterogeneous Immigrants and Foreign Direct Investment: The Role of Language Skills

“…While our focus on the interaction between immigrants and common language skills at the country-pair level is novel (to the best of our knowledge), we draw on several strands of literature. First, irrespective of migrant stocks, many studies have found that a common language increases bilateral trade (Egger and Lassmann, 2012) or FDI (Selmier and Oh, 2013); recent work such as Egger and Lassmann (2014) presents robust evidence on the 1 direction of causality from language to trade. 1 Second, Melitz and Toubal (2014) develop a global language dataset that includes not only the official language(s) of each country, but also any other language spoken by at least 4 percent of the population (such as English as a foreign language).…”