Bengt-Arne Wickström

Andrássy-Universität Budapest, Hungary · Fakultät für Internationale Beziehungen

Different normative approaches to status and acquisition planning and language rights have been analysed by a number of scholars from the point of view of law, political science, philosophy, sociology and economics.1 In this essay, though we present a stringent analytic approach based on welfare-economics theory, we do not reject other approaches....

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 suc...

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 ma...

Language policies for the purpose of (re)vitalizing a minority language are analyzed as a dynamic cost-effectiveness problem. We focus on policy measures with two types of cost structures: costs largely proportional to the number of beneficiaries (a rival measure) and costs independent of the number of beneficiaries (a non-rival measure). An exampl...

It is investigated under what conditions rents can be won through interference in the market through price subsidies. It is shown that owners of factors of production have an interest in price subsidies in the product market (which they can motivate with reference to “consumer interests”) only if the factor supply is not perfectly price elastic, th...

As a step towards a systematic comparative evaluation of the fairness of different language policies, a rationale is presented for the design of an index of linguistic justice based on public policy analysis. The approach taken is to define a 'minimum threshold of linguistic justice' with respect to government language policy in three domains: law...

It is assumed that language policy can influence the language in which parents choose to raise their children. A basic model of language transmission in the family is outlined and the effect of different policies on the vitality of a minority language is analyzed. It is argued that the habitation patterns and numerical strength of the minority have...

Piĝinaj/kreolaj lingvoj estiĝas pro la neceso komuniki en sociaj situacioj sen komuna lingvo. Almenaŭ kelkaj planlingvoj estas kreitaj de siaj aŭtoroj por faciligi komunikadon inter homoj de malsimilaj denaskaj lingvoj. En la unua kazo do spontanee ekkreiĝas la lingvaj rimedoj kaj en la dua ilin konscie kreas la aŭtoro de la lingvo. Nia hipotezo es...

Language rights for speakers of minority languages are analyzed as well-defined policy measures that are implemented in given jurisdictions. For the implementation of such rights in some countries, certain rules concerning the number and geographical distribution of the speakers of a minority language have to be fulfilled. We discuss, how a policy...

Based on a costoriented approach to public policy, we discuss how to decide about the implementation of linguistic minority rights. A formal model of policy measures is reviewed and a costefficient policy is characterized. The effects of the percentage rule-that rights be implemented if the relative size of a minority community reaches a certain le...

This is the Editorial of a special issue of Empirica - Journal of European Economics, entirely devoted to the relationship between language skills, human capital and labour market outcomes. It provides a summary of the seven article contained in the special issue, a critique of the concept of "language commodification" and it sets priorities for fu...

The ethnically homogeneous middleman groups (EHMGs), which are informal trading networks, are ubiquitous in less-developed economies where the legal infrastructure for contract enforcement is not well developed. This paper develops a formal model of social interaction among members of the EHMG as well as in more general situations in a multi-ethnic...

The essay gives an overview of how language planning and language policy can be motivated and analyzed by economic methods. It is discussed what type of value language-related goods possess and what type of goods they are, treating properties like degrees of rivalry, exclusion, and shielding. It is argued that allocation and distribution issues ass...

In this note, we outline various possible long-run effects of an English-only acquisition policy in the European Union. The point of departure is how individual behaviour adapts to constraints in the environment. This leads to changes in collective behaviour, which becomes part of the environment, again influencing individual behaviour. Possible eq...

In an era of globalization, issues of language diversity have economic and political implications. Transnational labor mobility, trade, social inclusion of migrants, democracy in multilingual countries, and companies’ international competitiveness all have a linguistic dimension; yet economists in general do not include language as a variable in th...

In an era of globalization, issues of language diversity have economic and political implications. Transnational labor mobility, trade, social inclusion of migrants, democracy in multilingual countries, and companies’ international competitiveness all have a linguistic dimension; yet economists in general do not include language as a variable in th...

We develop a dynamic language competition model with dynamic state intervention. Parents choose the language(s) to raise their children based on the communicational value of each language as well as on their emotional attachment to the languages at hand. Languages are thus conceptualized as tools for communication as well as carriers of cultural id...

Final version of the paper published in Mathematical Social Sciences (2016), pp. 8-21; DOI: 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2016.03.006 Final version of the paper can be downloaded free until May 28 2016 under the following link: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1SrCfbeCDooVw We develop a dynamic language competition model with dynamic state intervention. Pare...

In many countries there are linguistic, religious, and ethnic minorities coexisting with the majority. The phenomenon may be due to recent immigration or to historical factors such as the difference between the geographical boundaries and the historical settlements of the various groups. In this chapter, we attempt to set up a welfare-economics fr...

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...

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...

We ask the question when should an ethnic minority be nostrified into a society and be given various minority rights. In reality, some very small minorities, like the Sorbs in Lusatia in Germany, enjoy extensive minority rights whereas a very substantial minority, like the Turks in Berlin, is treated as a foreign element in the German society. One...

Die Stabilität der Struktur verschiedener Sprachen angesichts eines Imports fremder Elemente wird analysiert. Der Prozeß der Verbreitung neuer Elemente wird mit der Fähigkeit einer Sprache, diese Elemente zu absorbieren, verglichen. Das forma-le Modell ist identisch mit dem Standardmodell, das zur Analyse der Verwendung erneuerbarer Ressourcen benu...

La artikolo donas mallongan superrigardon de la ekonomika teorio de justeco kaj aplikas ĝin al la problemo de justa realigo de lingvorajtoj. Justeco estas unue difinita kiel la rezulto de libervolaj interŝanĝoj for de egaleca situacio. Tiu difino estas modifita por ebligi analizon de situacioj, kiam maleblas interŝanĝoj kaj kompenspagoj. Post difin...

There exists a considerable literature analyzing “language rights”. The concept, however, is not very well defined and covers everything from the rights of immigrants to keep their language or its opposite, their right to be rapidly integrated into a new culture, over the rights of national minorities to preserve their ancestral language to issues...

A model is developed in which parents choose the language or languages in which their children are brought up. Their choice of language community into which children are socialized depends both on the practical value of the language as a means of communication and on the emotional attachment of the parents to the language as a carrier of cultural i...

A model is developed in which parents choose the language or languages in which their children are brought up. Their choice of language community into which children are socialized depends both on the practical value of the language as a means of communication and on the emotional attachment of the parents to the language as a carrier of cultural i...

This brief survey reviews the economic consequences of terrorism. It is argued that the indirect effects of terrorism are likely to outweigh the direct effects. The former include changes in risk, transaction costs, demand, public finances and growth. We also address the nature of anti-terrorist policy and of policies reducing the negative impact o...

This introduction notes the importance of the economic evaluation of the consequences of terror and summarizes the contributions in this special issue.

Social conventions and norms can be modeled as equilibria of coordination games. It is argued that the critical mass necessary for a society to move from one convention, that is from one equilibrium, to another changes with changes in the population structure due to generation shifts. A scandal is defined as a breach of the accepted norm by a promi...

Social conventions and norms can be modeled as equilibria of coordination games. it is argued that the critical mass necessary for a society to move from one convention, that is from one equilibrium, to another changes correspondingly with changes in the population structure due to generation shifts. A scandal is defined as a breach of the accepted...

Taking our point of departure in an article by Selten and Pool and using the equilibrium selection theory developed by Harsanyi and Selten, we analyze the risk dominant equilibria of a language game. Into a model with two groups of people with different native ethnic languages, we introduce a further interethnic planned language, Esperanto, the lea...

The essay analyzes in an overlapping-generations model, to which extent a pay-as-you-go pension system will be the outcome of majority voting, given specific institutional set-ups. Clearly, the vote of an active person depends on his expectations about how the present decision (i.e., his contribution) is linked to the future (i.e., his benefits), w...

It is demonstrated how economic theory of justice as fairness, Pareto improvements on situations involving equity, can be used to analyze the ethics contents of distributions of rights and privileges. The analysis makes use of the concept of a veil of ignorance to define a status quo. A property right to an ability or a privilege is interpreted as...

Redistributional policy is often seen as an important factor in explaining the growth in the size of government that has been observed in this century.1) Several factors explaining the expansion in redistributional activities, can be thought of. On the one extreme, one has pure altruism in combination with some ideologically motivated concept of ju...

It is argued that the theory of the optimal majority for public decision making in its standard formulation is insufficient as a tool to analyze the relationship between different optimal majorities for different kinds of decisions. The theory is reformulated and conditions for optimal majorities for different types of decisions are derived. It is...

This paper studies the impact of transaction costs in a fully monetarized exchange economy in which money serves as unit of account, numéraire, medium of exchange, and intertemporal store of value, and proves the existence of a temporary competitive equilibrium when monetary transaction costs are intertemporally uncertain. In addition to the genera...

We characterize and study the relationship between income redistributions that are just and stable. We assume that for a given economy there exists a set of possible income redistributions, the constitution of the economy. The choice of redistribution is in the hands of the agents, who decide by majority vote. A stable redistribution is one that ma...

The supply correspondence of a competitive firm facing price uncertainty is characterized assuming the firm to be asymptotically risk averse.

A stochastically constrained optimal replacement model for capital equipment is constructed. Each piece of capital equipment, or machine, is characterized by its age and “utility” or “readiness” class. The readiness of a machine at any age is a stochastic function of its initial utility class and its age. The total discounted replacement cost of se...

By high resolution observations at 3 mm wavelength during the eclipses of September 11, 1969 and March 7, 1970 we have observed two filaments on the solar disc in absorption. We analyze in detail the 3.3 mm eclipse data and 9.5 mm (non-eclipse) data we have pertaining to the large filament observed on September 11, 1969. At 3.3 mm the plasma temper...