IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/kiepwp/2011_008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can English Proficiency Boost International Trade in Services?

Author

Listed:
  • Lee , Kyounghee

    (Korea Economic Research Institute)

Abstract

Recently, increasing numbers of financial MNEs are adopting English as their in-company official language. This paper attempts to investigate to what extent English proficiency, as the language of global business, can boost international trade in services. To achieve this purpose, this paper estimates the determinants of services trade including language variables with the aggregated and disaggregated data for nine different subsectors of OECD countries. The empirical model is based on a theory-based gravity model derived from Anderson and von Wincoop (2003, 2004). The findings show that English proficiency has a significant influence on services trade, while other languages such as French and German have only weak and mixed effects. In particular, communication, financial, commercial, insurance, and business services are revealed to be the most impacted by the level of English proficiency. The results imply that governments can use their English policies to promote international trade in services.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee , Kyounghee, 2011. "Can English Proficiency Boost International Trade in Services?," Working Papers 11-8, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:kiepwp:2011_008
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2319777
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2319777
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2139/ssrn.2319777?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Proficiency In English; International Trade In Services; Gravity Model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:kiepwp:2011_008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Juwon Seo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/kieppkr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.