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YOUR LANGUAGE OR MINE? THE NONCOMMUNICATIVE BENEFITS OF LANGUAGE SKILLS
Author(s) -
Caminal Ramon,
Di Paolo Antonio
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/ecin.12542
Subject(s) - catalan , endogamy , exploit , neuroscience of multilingualism , propensity score matching , focus (optics) , linguistics , psychology , sociology , computer science , medicine , demography , philosophy , population , physics , computer security , optics
Do languages matter beyond their communicative benefits? We explore the potential role of preferences over the language of use, theoretically and empirically. We focus on Catalonia, a bilingual society where everyone is fully proficient in Spanish, to isolate linguistic preferences from communicative benefits. Moreover, we exploit the language‐in‐education reform of 1983 to identify the causal effects of language skills. Results indicate that the policy change has improved the Catalan proficiency of native Spanish speakers, which in turn increased their propensity to find Catalan‐speaking partners. Hence, the acquisition of apparently redundant language skills has reduced endogamy. ( JEL C26, C78, I28, J12, J15, Z13)