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Computational-Content-Analysis-2020 / Readings-Responses-Spring

Repository for organizing orienting, exemplary and fundament readings, and posting responses.
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Measuring Meaning & Counting Words - (E2) Chen 2013 #3

Open jamesallenevans opened 4 years ago

jamesallenevans commented 4 years ago

Post questions here for the the following exemplary reading:

  1. Chen, Keith. 2013. “The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evident from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets.” American Economic Review 103(2): 690-731. (But you must also skim the retraction/qualification in Roberts, Seán G., James Winters, and Keith Chen. 2015. “Future Tense and Economic Decisions: Controlling for Cultural Evolution.” PLOS ONE 10(7): e0132145.)
WMhYang commented 4 years ago

I have two questions regarding the paper.

  1. The author uses a binary variable to separate languages into strong FTR and weak FTR based on whether the language gramatically mark future events. However, in reality, some languages may be used worldwidely such that local grammas differ one place from another. For example, English is spoken all over the world and it is well known that English in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia is quite different from that in the US in both accents and grammas. Is there any possibility that the same language exhibits different FTR property under different local grammas?

  2. The author uses the language spoken in the family as the proxy of language for that family. However, for couples from different countries, or couples who live in a country that is different from where they were born, it is common that the language they speak at home is not their native language, so it cannot reflect their attitudes towards future. How could we alleviate this bias? Could we kick out these families to do so?

Moreover, I have another thought about this paper. Since the data of FTR from EUROTYP is quite old, could we examine the languages on social websites to construct a FTR measure for each person?

liu431 commented 4 years ago

The author discusses a lot about whether the result implies causality. I think there is already some paper using natural experiments (such as comparing native German kids with American-born German kids who learn English at school) to validate the result.