IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wsr/wpaper/y2009i023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Talking Trade: Language Barriers in Intra-Canadian Commerce

Author

Listed:
  • Nicolas Sauter

Abstract

This paper tests for one mechanism that can explain the existence of a language barrier to trade. Specifically, I ask if those industries that require more cross-border communication in order to export their products trade more between Canadian provinces that know the other's language(s). I find that trade in industries with a need to communicate directly (orally) with importers increases with the probability that people in another province speak the same language. This finding can fill a missing link in the empirical trade literature, which lacked convincing arguments for the observed correlation between language commonality and the total volume of trade.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolas Sauter, 2009. "Talking Trade: Language Barriers in Intra-Canadian Commerce," FIW Working Paper series 023, FIW.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsr:wpaper:y:2009:i:023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.fiw.ac.at/fileadmin/Documents/Publikationen/Working_Paper/N_023-Sauter.pdf
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: none
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    2. William K. Hutchinson, 2002. "Does Ease of Communication Increase Trade? Commonality of Language and Bilateral Trade," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0217, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    3. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2003. "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 170-192, March.
    4. Nathan Nunn, 2007. "Relationship-Specificity, Incomplete Contracts, and the Pattern of Trade," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 569-600.
    5. Martijn Burger & Frank van Oort & Gert-Jan Linders, 2009. "On the Specification of the Gravity Model of Trade: Zeros, Excess Zeros and Zero-inflated Estimation," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 167-190.
    6. Henk Kox & Arjan Lejour, 2005. "Regulatory heterogeneity as obstacle for international services trade," CPB Discussion Paper 49, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    7. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Lafourcade, Miren & Mayer, Thierry, 2003. "Can Business and Social Networks Explain the Border Effect Puzzle?," CEPR Discussion Papers 3750, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1998. "Financial Dependence and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 559-586, June.
    9. Jan Fidrmuc & Jarko Fidrmuc, 2009. "Foreign Languages and Trade," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 09-03, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    10. Fink, Carsten & Mattoo, Aaditya & Neagu, Ileana Cristina, 2005. "Assessing the impact of communication costs on international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 428-445, December.
    11. John Romalis, 2004. "Factor Proportions and the Structure of Commodity Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 67-97, March.
    12. Andrei A. Levchenko, 2007. "Institutional Quality and International Trade," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 791-819.
    13. Henri L. F. De Groot & Gert‐Jan Linders & Piet Rietveld & Uma Subramanian, 2004. "The Institutional Determinants of Bilateral Trade Patterns," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 103-123, February.
    14. Alan V. Deardorff, 2011. "Determinants of Bilateral Trade: Does Gravity Work in a Neoclassical World?," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robert M Stern (ed.), Comparative Advantage, Growth, And The Gains From Trade And Globalization A Festschrift in Honor of Alan V Deardorff, chapter 24, pages 267-293, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Russell Hillberry & David Hummels, 2003. "Intranational Home Bias: Some Explanations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 1089-1092, November.
    16. Edward P. Lazear, 1999. "Culture and Language," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages 95-126, December.
    17. Wagner, Don & Head, Keith & Ries, John, 2002. "Immigration and the Trade of Provinces," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(5), pages 507-525, December.
    18. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2006. "The Log of Gravity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 641-658, November.
    19. Andrew K. Rose, 2000. "One money, one market: the effect of common currencies on trade," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 15(30), pages 08-45.
    20. Holger C. Wolf, 2000. "Intranational Home Bias In Trade," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 555-563, November.
    21. Elhanan Helpman & Marc Melitz & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 441-487.
    22. William K. Hutchinson, 2005. "“Linguistic Distance” as a Determinant of Bilateral Trade," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, July.
    23. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2009. "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(3), pages 1095-1131.
    24. Matthias Helble, 2007. "Is God Good for Trade?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 385-413, August.
    25. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1998. "The Regionalization of the World Economy," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number fran98-1, March.
    26. John F. Helliwell, 1996. "Do National Borders Matter for Quebec's Trade?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 29(3), pages 507-522, August.
    27. Rauch, James E., 1999. "Networks versus markets in international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 7-35, June.
    28. Patrick Royston & Nicholas J. Cox, 2005. "A multivariable scatterplot smoother," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 5(3), pages 405-412, September.
    29. William K. Hutchinson, 2002. "Does Ease of Communication Increase Trade? Commonality of Language and Bilateral Trade," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(5), pages 544-556, November.
    30. R. Winkelmann, 1998. "Count data models with selectivity," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 339-359.
    31. McCallum, John, 1995. "National Borders Matter: Canada-U.S. Regional Trade Patterns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 615-623, June.
    32. Don Wagner & Keith Head & John Ries, 2002. "Immigration and the Trade of Provinces," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(5), pages 507-525, November.
    33. Jeffrey Frankel & Andrew Rose, 2002. "An Estimate of the Effect of Common Currencies on Trade and Income," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(2), pages 437-466.
    34. Melitz, Jacques, 2008. "Language and foreign trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 667-699, May.
    35. Cragg, John G. & Donald, Stephen G., 1993. "Testing Identifiability and Specification in Instrumental Variable Models," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 222-240, April.
    36. John F. Helliwell, 1997. "National Borders, Trade and Migration," NBER Working Papers 6027, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    37. Dunlevy, James A. & Hutchinson, William K., 1999. "The Impact of Immigration on American Import Trade in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 59(4), pages 1043-1062, December.
    38. Hutchinson, William K, 2002. "Does Ease of Communication Increase Trade? Commonality of Language and Bilateral Trade," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(5), pages 544-556, December.
    39. Henk Kox & Arjan Lejour, 2006. "The Effects of the Services Directive on Intra-eu Trade and fdi," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 57(4), pages 747-769.
    40. James E. Rauch & Vitor Trindade, 2002. "Ethnic Chinese Networks In International Trade," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 116-130, February.
    41. Daniel Berkowitz & Johannes Moenius & Katharina Pistor, 2006. "Trade, Law, and Product Complexity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(2), pages 363-373, May.
    42. Joshua J. Lewer & Hendrik Van den Berg, 2007. "Estimating the Institutional and Network Effects of Religious Cultures on International Trade," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 255-277, May.
    43. Ku, Hyejin & Zussman, Asaf, 2010. "Lingua franca: The role of English in international trade," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 250-260, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Yongjin & Wang, Yanling & Li, Kunwang, 2014. "Judicial quality, contract intensity and exports: Firm-level evidence," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 32-42.
    2. Núria Quella & Silvio Rendon, 2012. "Occupational selection in multilingual labor markets: the case of Catalonia," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 33(8), pages 918-937, November.
    3. Helene Tenzer & Siri Terjesen & Anne-Wil Harzing, 2017. "Language in International Business: A Review and Agenda for Future Research," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 57(6), pages 815-854, December.
    4. Roberto Antonietti & Massimo Loi, 2014. "The demand for foreign languages in Italian manufacturing," Working Papers 57, AlmaLaurea Inter-University Consortium.
    5. Peter H. Egger & Andrea Lassmann, 2015. "The Causal Impact of Common Native Language on International Trade: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(584), pages 699-745, May.
    6. Daria Ciriaci & Alessandro Muscio, 2011. "University choice, research quality and graduates' employability: Evidence from Italian national survey data," Working Papers 48, AlmaLaurea Inter-University Consortium.
    7. Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten & Libman, Alexander & Yu, Xiaofan, 2014. "Economic integration in China: Politics and culture," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 470-492.
    8. Peter Egger & Andrea Lassmann, 2014. "Cultural Integration and Export Variety Overlap Across Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 4800, CESifo.
    9. David Fielding & Christopher Hajzler & James Macgee, 2015. "Distance, Language, Religion, and the Law of One Price: Evidence from Canada and Nigeria," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(5), pages 1007-1029, August.
    10. Christian Reiner, 2010. "Brain competition policy as a new paradigm of regional policy: A European perspective," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(2), pages 449-461, June.
    11. Sui, Sui & Morgan, Horatio M. & Baum, Matthias, 2015. "Internationalization of immigrant-owned SMEs: The role of language," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 804-814.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Melitz, Jacques & Toubal, Farid, 2014. "Native language, spoken language, translation and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 351-363.
    2. repec:edn:sirdps:417 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Noel Gaston & Douglas R. Nelson, 2013. "Bridging Trade Theory And Labour Econometrics: The Effects Of International Migration," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 98-139, February.
    4. Michele Fratianni & Francesco Marchionne, 2011. "The Limits to Integration," Chapters, in: Miroslav N. Jovanović (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Integration, Volume I, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Melitz, Jacques, 2008. "Language and foreign trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 667-699, May.
    6. Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten & Libman, Alexander & Yu, Xiaofan, 2014. "Economic integration in China: Politics and culture," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 470-492.
    7. Michele Fratianni & Francesco Marchionne, 2012. "Trade Costs and Economic Development," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 88(2), pages 137-163, April.
    8. Bailey, Michael & Gupta, Abhinav & Hillenbrand, Sebastian & Kuchler, Theresa & Richmond, Robert & Stroebel, Johannes, 2021. "International trade and social connectedness," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    9. Roger White, 2010. "Migration and International Trade," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13670.
    10. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    11. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:6:y:2008:i:48:p:1-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Magerman, Glenn & Studnicka, Zuzanna & Van Hove, Jan, 2016. "Distance and border effects in international trade: A comparison of estimation methods," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 10, pages 1-31.
    13. Pascal L. Ghazalian, 2012. "Home Bias in Primary Agricultural and Processed Food Trade: Assessing the Effects of National Degree of Uncertainty Aversion," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 265-290, June.
    14. William K. Hutchinson, 2005. "“Linguistic Distance” as a Determinant of Bilateral Trade," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, July.
    15. White, Roger & Tadesse, Bedassa, 2008. "Immigrants, cultural distance and U.S. state-level exports of cultural products," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 331-348, December.
    16. Jan Fidrmuc & Jarko Fidrmuc, 2016. "Foreign languages and trade: evidence from a natural experiment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 31-49, February.
    17. Peter H. Egger & Andrea Lassmann, 2015. "The Causal Impact of Common Native Language on International Trade: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(584), pages 699-745, May.
    18. Sui, Sui & Morgan, Horatio M. & Baum, Matthias, 2015. "Internationalization of immigrant-owned SMEs: The role of language," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 804-814.
    19. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Lafourcade, Miren & Mayer, Thierry, 2005. "The trade-creating effects of business and social networks: evidence from France," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 1-29, May.
    20. Roger White & Bedassa Tadesse, 2011. "International Migration and Economic Integration," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14318.
    21. William K. Hutchinson, 2001. ""Linguistic Distance" as a Determinant of Bilateral Trade," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0130, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics, revised Oct 2003.
    22. Egger, Peter H. & Ehrlich, Maximilian v. & Nelson, Douglas R., 2020. "The trade effects of skilled versus unskilled migration," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 448-464.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Language; Trade cost; Gravity model; Canada;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F40 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - General

    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:wsr:wpaper:y:2009:i:023. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.