Alcalde Unzu, JorgeMoreno Ternero, Juan D.Weber, Shlomo2022-08-192022-08-192022Alcalde-Unzu, J.; Moreno-Ternero, J.; Weber, S.. (2022). The measurement of the value of a language. Journal of economic theory. 203,105468 .0022-053110.1016/j.jet.2022.105468https://academica-e.unavarra.es/handle/2454/43821We address the problem of assessing the value of a language. We consider a stylized model of multilingual societies in which we introduce axioms formalizing the principles of impartiality, monotonicity, invariance and consistency. We show that the combination of these axioms characterizes a family of communicative benefit functions which assign a value to each language in the society. The functions within the family involve a two-step procedure. First, they identify the groups of agents that can communicate in each language. Second, each group is assigned an aggregate (size-dependent) value, which is evenly divided among the languages in which the group can communicate. Our novel approach could be useful in a wide range of empirical applications and policy decisions.application/pdfeng© 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY license.Value of a languageCommunicative benefitsMeasureAxiomsCharacterizationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article2022-08-19info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess