The role of language in international trade: How does language affect the choice of foreign trading partners?

• Maria João Ferro ; Sandra Ribeiro ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

     Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

     Socorro, Portugal

     
• Localización: Proceedings of the International Congress on Interdisciplinarity in Social and Human Sciences.5th - 6th May 2016 / coord. por Saul Neves de Jesus, Patrícia Pinto, 2016, ISBN 978-989-8472-82-3, págs. 616-629
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • In an increasingly global and networked economy, companies have a wider market at their disposal but also anumber of barriers they have to overcome in order to expand their business internationally. When the decision oftrading with another country is made, one of the key issues companies have to deal with is language: language barrierscan hinder international trade, while language similarities can boost it due to the weight of communication costs.The economics of language is an interdisciplinary field of study that aims to bring together reflections on the role oflanguage in the economy and conversely on how the economy affects language choices.In this study we focus on the relationship between international trade and language barriers by analysing Portugueseexports of goods and find that language does play an important role in the choice of foreign trading partners althoughsharing Portuguese as the common language with a group of countries does not imply exporting more to thosecountries as one might expect. We therefore argue for the increase of multilingual policies in education and moreinvestment in reaping the benefits that Portuguese as an international language might bring to our country