Conference: Economic Evaluation of Language Policies - Some Observations

CIRANO

Thursday 8 Nov 2018
From 11:30AM To 1:30PM

Event organized in collaboration with

Conference by François Vaillancourt (Université de Montréal and CIRANO)

There are costs and benefits to be gained from replacing laissez-faire and free choice of language with public policies to regulate the language of one or another level of education, that of various public authorities and that of the private sector. This conference examined how these costs and benefits can be measured in theory and in practice, using results from Quebec, Canada and some European countries.

François Vaillancourt

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2004, François Vaillancourt is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Economics at the Université de Montréal.

Holder of a PhD in economics from Queen's University (1978), he published over 300 texts, particularly on intergovernmental financial relations, the complexity and impact of Canadian taxation, the cost-effectiveness of linguistic studies and attributes, and the economics of language policies.

Named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva in 2021 for his work on the economics of language issues. Over his career, he has been a Fulbright Canadian Research Scholar in Kennesaw (2007) and a Shastri Lecturer in India (1993). He has been a visiting professor/researcher at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies in Atlanta (2007 and 2009), FUCaM (Mons, Belgium, 2006), École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (Paris, 2006 and 2008), the University of Toronto (1991) and the Australian National University (1991). He was also research coordinator for the MacDonald Commission (1983-1986) and associate editor of Canadian Public Policy-Analyse de Politiques (1986-1995). He has acted as a consultant for various national (including CIDA, House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, Commission Séguin, Law Reform Commission of Canada, Conseil de la Fédération, Conseil de la langue française du Québec, CSST, Finance Canada, Forum of Federations, Federal Expert Panel on Equalization Reform, Institut Fraser, Office de la langue française, Statistics Canada and the Auditor General of Canada and Quebec) and international organizations (AFD, World Bank, IMF, OECD, UNDP). He has worked in 35 countries/entities on issues of regional and local financial resources (taxation, transfers) and provided training in this field for the African Tax Institute, the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, the World Bank, the IMF, and the Hague Academy for Local Governance.

[ - ]

[ + ]