Language tense for time preference, an academic argument

For the Netherlands, the future is NOW!!

The other day in the behavioral economics class, I discussed such ideas with my fellow classmates , concerning whether the verb tense might influence some economic behaviors in different cultures. It seems some scholars indeed try to use quantitative models to explore such effect.

The working paper  in January done by Yale Economics Professor Keith Chen indicated that, for people using languages with weak future-time reference(FTR), they would have higher saving rates. The reason is that, they perceive the future as PRESENT! Consequently. any problems that might happen in the future would not be perceived that "remote." Therefore, people in this language group will react to problems as if it is "NOW!" 

The immediate comparison is between German and English. I am not familiar with German, yet, as the author suggest, in German you could say "Morgen regnet es" ,directly translated as "It rains tomorrow." Yet, in English it should be written as "It will rain tomorrow" Usage of "will" or not is a key indication of strong or weak FTR form. As noted in this case, German speakers could take a future event  as present one and start taking precautionary measures to deal with such event.

The second interesting results is, after adjusted to such effect, people in southern Europe actually save MORE than their Northern counterparts. In other words, if southern Europeans were speaking in the same language structure as the Northern Europeans, then they would have saved more than these Northern parts!

Language is playing a role in our economic decisions!