The Optimal Babel - An Economic Framework for the Analysis of Dynamic Language Rights

We analyze various normatively determined distributions of language rights in multilingual settings. A general model for the analysis of language rights over time in a model with overlapping generations is set up. This model is then first used to find efficient allocations of rights in the tradition of Wicksell. It is shown that, when rights today influence the status of a language in the future, the “naïve” static analysis has to be augmented in favor of further-reaching minority rights in order to take into account the dynamic aspect. It is then demonstrated that a traditional welfare-economic analysis generally goes even further in the support of minority rights. If a possible externality on other communities is taken into account, however, these results are reversed in a pure efficiency analysis. If redistribution arguments are taken into account, this provides an effect in the opposite direction again.equivalence principle, minority rights, changeable preferences, dynamic preferences, welfare economics, overlapping generations

Welfare-optimal Status Planning of Minority Languages: An Economic Approach

We analyze normatively determined distributions of language rights in multilingual settings. It is shown in a welfare-maximizing model where rights today influence the status of a language in the future, that the “naïve” ex ante cost-benefit analysis has to be augmented in various directions. This has its roots in the dynamic aspect of the rights and the resulting endogeneity of preferences as well as in the discrete character of rights. It is shown how efficiency and distribution considerations are affected by these considerations.minority rights, changeable preferences, dynamic preferences, welfare function, second-best analysis, overlapping generations

Language Rights - A Welfare-Economics Approach

Distributions of language rights in multilingual settings are analyzed from a normative viewpoint in this chapter. If the cost structure of providing rights is concave in the number of beneficiaries, then a critical-mass criterion for the determination of an optimal rights structure results. It is further shown that an efficiency analysis based on a ‘naive’ cost-benefit calculation has to be augmented in various ways if rights influence the status of a language, which in turn influences the preferences for language rights. Also the inter-generational transfer of language repertoires to the next generation leads to an endogeneity of preferences. The endogeneity of preferences in turn can make the cost-benefit analysis contradictory. In a welfare-maximizing approach, redistribution goals further modify the analysis

Welfare-optimal status planning of minority languages: An economic approach

We analyze normatively determined distributions of language rights in multilingual settings. It is shown in a welfare-maximizing model where rights today influence the status of a language in the future, that the 'naive' ex ante cost-benefit analysis has to be augmented in various directions. This has its roots in the dynamic aspect of the rights and the resulting endogeneity of preferences as well as in the discrete character of rights. It is shown how efficiency and distribution considerations are affected by these considerations

Language as a renewable resource: Import, dissipation, and absorption of innovations

The structural stability of different languages subject to the import of external elements is analyzed. We focus on the temporal side of the different processes interacting to produce a change in the structure of the language. That is, the rate of import and dissipation of new elements is seen in relation to the rate at which a language absorbs such new elements into its structure. The analysis leads to a model that in the steady state is formally similar to the standard model used to analyze the extraction of renewable natural resources. This model is applied to different sociolinguistic situations and we speculate about how the structural type of a language might influence its rate of adaptation of the external innovations and how the cultural and social status of the idiom (partially) determines the rate of import of such innovations. Conditions that might lead to attrition and decay of the linguistic system, are characterized and some policy implications are drawn

The optimal babel: An economic framework for the analysis of dynamic language rights

We analyze various normatively determined distributions of language rights in multilingual settings. A general model for the analysis of language rights over time in a model with overlapping generations is set up. This model is then first used to find efficient allocations of rights in the tradition of Wicksell. It is shown that, when rights today influence the status of a language in the future, the naïve static analysis has to be augmented in favor of further-reaching minority rights in order to take into account the dynamic aspect. It is then demonstrated that a traditional welfare-economic analysis generally goes even further in the support of minority rights. If a possible externality on other communities is taken into account, however, these results are reversed in a pure efficiency analysis. If redistribution arguments are taken into account, this provides an effect in the opposite direction again

A Concise Bibliography of Language Economics

The following pages are devoted to a bibliography which, though not exhaustive, provides an extensive set of references to several categories of literature in language economics. It consolidates the respective literature lists used by the authors over the years in their research and teaching. The bibliography is structured according to a “mental map” developed by Grin. The four highest levels of this structure are reproduced at the beginning of the essay