An interesting talk on language and savings

[Xiao]

I came across this Ted talk and found it interesting but still skeptical about the conclusion though:

The speaker is a behavior economist and found, after intense statistical analysis of demographics survey data, that language has an influence on saving behaviors. More specifically, futureless language speakers such as Chinese tend to save more than futured language speakers such as Americans. 

I am usually skeptical about this kind of big claims on complex issues, but the finding was published in American Economic Review that gives me some assurance of its validity.

I  believe language influences fundamentally every aspect of our life and this might be an example.

http://www.ted.com/talks/keith_chen_could_your_language_affect_your_ability_to_save_money.html

[Luo Wang]

Interesting but not very convincing though

The line he draws between "futured" languages and "futuresless" languages seems very peculiar.  

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Luo Wang

Department of History

University of Minnesota

[Jiabin Wu]

Thanks for sharing! It's a very intriguing topic. Lots of people discuss about this paper on Weibo these few days too.

One of Keith Chen's adviser David Laibson is the leading figure in studying people's time preferences (procrastination behavior). To me, I am impressed by how he combines his own experiences in understanding cultural differences with what he learned in school, haha.

[Xiao Yi]

This is definitely the way sociology and behavioral economics should
go. But what I want to see more is after interesting correlations are
identified from observational data, careful experiments/case studies
are conducted to elaborate the underlying mechanisms and causality.

[Jiabin Wu]

Haha, love to see paper that digs a big hole for future study.

[wall ice]

Wow, I had never thought of it this way. This is very interesting!!
Thanks for sharing.