The Grammar of Economic Behaviour: Future-Time Reference in Bilingual Speakers

Most economic decisions are fundamentally about the preference for larger rewards later over smaller rewards sooner, and a growing body of literature suggests that linguistic structures, in particular the grammatical marking of future time reference (FTR), may shape individuals’ time preferences and future-oriented behaviour. This paper examines whether variation in language proficiency among bilingual adolescents exposed to both weak- and strong-FTR languages within the same institutional and cultural environment is associated with differences in future-oriented behaviour and educational outcomes. We analyse German–Turkish and German–Russian bilingual students and relate individual-level language proficiency to willingness to invest time in learning, mathematics grades and self-assessed patience. Across a range of specifications and robustness checks, we find no evidence that greater proficiency in a strong-FTR language is associated with less future-oriented behaviour; if anything, it is weakly positively associated with willingness to invest in learning. The absence of negative associations suggests that previously documented effects may operate through long-run cultural transmission rather than grammatical structure alone and has important implications for education policy in increasingly multilingual European societies.