Languages in the European Union: The Quest for Equality and its Cost

The European Union has recently expanded from 15 to 25 countries. In line with this enlargement, the list of official EU languages has grown from 11 to 20. Currently, the EU extends equal treatment to all member countries’ official languages by providing translations for documents and interpreting services for meetings and sessions of the European Parliament. This, however, is costly, especially when recognizing that many Europeans speak one of the procedural languages of the EU, English, French or German, either as their native language or as a foreign language. We compute disenfranchisement rates that would result from using only the three procedural languages for all EU business, and marginal costs per disenfranchised person associated with providing translations and interpreting into the remaining 17 languages. The marginal costs are shown to vary substantially across the different languages, raising important questions about the economic efficiency of equal treatment for all languages. We argue that an efficient solution would be to decentralize the provision of translations.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40101/3/wp715.pd

Bundling by Competitors and the Sharing of Profits

We discuss the effects of bundling two goods offered by two symmetric firms. This situation requires the use of some sharing rule for the profits from the sales of the bundle. We show that the choice of this rule may have substantial effects on prices and profits – even if the possible rules eventually yield equal shares. In particular, the use of the a priori equal sharing rule yields lower prices and profits, than a price weighted sharing rule. When competitors bundle, they can implicitly cooperate via the setting of the profit sharing rule and increase their profits at the expense of consumers. This issue calls for some further attention by regulators.

Natural endowments, production technologies, and the quality of wines in Bordeaux. Is it possible to produce wine on paved roads?

We study whether quality assessments made by wine experts and by consumers (based on prices obtained at auction between 1980 and 1992), can be explained by variables describing endowments (land characteristics, exposures of vineyards) and technologies (from grape varieties and picking, to bottled wines). However, since technological choices are likely to depend on endowments, the effects can only be identified using an instrumental variables approach. We show that technological choices affect quality much more than natural endowments, the effect of which is negligible.wine production, wine quality, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Success: talent, intelligence or beauty ?

We analyze the Celebrity 100 annual list of the world’s most “powerful celebrities” compiled and published by Forbes Magazine. The lists provide an interesting collection of people, that includes their earnings, and the perception of citizens concerning the attributes that made them become celebrities. We analyze the relationship between their earnings and the perceptions on their intelligence, talent, beauty and other attributes, and show that though beauty plays a role, intelligence and talent are more important.earnings, economic success, talent

Languages Disenfranchisement in the European Union

We introduce the notion of language disenfranchisement which arises if the number of EU working languages is reduced. We use the data on language proficiency in EU and show that, in spite of the widespread knowledge of English, the retention of French and German as working languages in essential to avoid a too large degree of disenfranchisement of citizens. The picture, however, becomes somewhat different if we consider the population under age of 40. We also argue that even though French is the second leading language within the EU, the situation is likely to be reversed after the enlargement.Languages, Disenfranchisement, European Union

Languages in the European Union: The Quest for Equality and its Cost

The European Union has recently expanded from 15 to 25 countries. In line with this enlargement, the list of official EU languages has grown from 11 to 20. Currently, the EU extends equal treatment to all member countries’ official languages by providing translations for documents and interpreting services for meetings and sessions of the European Parliament. This, however, is costly, especially when recognizing that many Europeans speak one of the procedural languages of the EU, English, French or German, either as their native language or as a foreign language. We compute disenfranchisement rates that would result from using only the three procedural languages for all EU business, and marginal costs per disenfranchised person associated with providing translations and interpreting into the remaining 17 languages. The marginal costs are shown to vary substantially across the different languages, raising important questions about the economic efficiency of equal treatment for all languages. We argue that an efficient solution would be to decentralize the provision of translations.Languages, Disenfranchisement, European Union, Cost and benefit analysis

Returns to foreign languages of native workers in the EU

Most papers on returns to languages are concerned with immigrants. We use the European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP) to infer returns on non-native languages by non-immigrants in nine countries of the European Union. We differ fromthe few other studies that deal with the same problem in three respects. First, we correct for time-dependent measurement errors in self-reporting as suggested by Dustmann and Van Soest and find that the resulting IV estimates are much larger than those obtained by OLS. We also suggest that there is little room for time-persistent errors and heterogeneity, and that therefore our estimates should not suffer from the other usual biases. Secondly, instead of using a dummy for each language, we use the ratio of the population that is not proficient in a language in each country considered. Finally, we estimate instrumental variable quantile regressions to illustrate how returns to languages vary at different points of the distribution of earnings.

Ever Closer Union or Babylonian Discord?

Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union. However, a large number of official languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. We address the merits of multilingualism and formulate an analytical framework to determine the optimal number of official languages in the EU. Using the results of a 2005 Eurobarometer survey of languages in the EU 27, we first derive the sets of languages that minimize aggregate linguistic disenfranchisement of the Unionís citizens for any given number of languages. We then proceed by discussing the political-economy framework and feasibility of a potential linguistic reform in the EU under alternative voting rules. We argue that a six-language regime would be a reasonable intermediate choice: a lower number of official languages results in excessive linguistic disenfranchisement whereas adding further languages increases the costs but brings only limited benefits. We also show that even though a linguistic reform reducing the number of official languages to six is unlikely to gain sufficient support at the present, this may change in the future since young people are more proficient at speaking foreign languages.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64410/1/wp887.pd

La dynamique des langues en Belgique.

Ce numéro de Regards économiques est consacré à la question des connaissances linguistiques en Belgique et dans ses trois régions (Bruxelles, Flandre, Wallonie). Les enquêtes montrent que la Flandre est bien plus multilingue, ce qui est sans doute un fait bien connu, mais la différence est considérable : alors que 59 % et 53 % des Flamands connaissent le français ou l'anglais respectivement, seulement 19 % et 17 % des Wallons connaissent le néerlandais ou l'anglais. Les mesures préconisées par le Plan Marshall vont dans la bonne direction, mais sont sans doute très insuffisantes pour combler le retard.

Voting on the Choice of Core Languages in the European UnionÂ

Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union (EU). However, a large number of languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. On the other hand, the reduction of the number of languages would disenfranchise some or many EU citizens. We use the results of a survey on languages and argue that even though a linguistic reform reducing the number of languages is unlikely to gain sufficient political support today, this may change in the future since young people are more proficient at speaking foreign languages.Languages, Disenfranchisement, European Union, Linguistic standardization