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Weiguo Zhang

Shandong University, China

I am excited and honored to be a part of this innovative project. I hope that policymakers and academics alike will find World of Labor a useful way to quickly learn the latest state of research on a wide range of issues in labor policy

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Professor of Economics, Center for Economic Research, Shandong University, China

Research interest

Language, labor, education, and development

Website

https://faculty.sdu.edu.cn/zhangweiguo/zh_CN/index.htm

Qualifications

PhD Economics, Shandong University, 2008

Selected publications

  • Towards an Economic Approach to Language: An Elementary Framework. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2016 (in Chinese).

  • "English listening, speaking, and earnings among workers in urban China." Education Economics 28:2 (2020) 211–223 (with D. Lien).

  • "How can language be linked to economics?: A survey of two strands of research." Language Problems and Language Planning 37:3 (2013): 203–226 (with G. Grenier).

  • "Language as human capital, public good and institution." Economic Research Journal 43:2 (2008): 144–154 (in Chinese).

article(s)

  • The value of language skills Updated

    A common language facilitates communication and economic efficiency, but linguistic diversity has economic and cultural value too

    Gilles GrenierWeiguo Zhang, March 2021
    In today's globalized world, people are increasingly mobile and often need to communicate across different languages. Learning a new language is an investment in human capital. Migrants must learn the language of their destination country, but even non-migrants must often learn other languages if their work involves communicating with foreigners. Economic studies have shown that fluency in a dominant language is important to economic success and increases economic efficiency. However, maintaining linguistic diversity also has value since language is also an expression of people's culture.
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