TV or not TV? The Economic Impact of Subtitling and English Skills

and the Work Pensions and Labour Economics Conferences for helpful feedback. Eduard Bartoll, Natàlia Izard, Agnieszka Szarkowska and Patrick Zabalbeascoa helped with the historical and linguistic accounts. We study the inuence of television translation techniques on the quality of the English spoken across the EU and OECD, and the subsequent impact of English skills on measures of economic performance. We identify a large positive e¤ect for subtitled original version broadcasts, as opposed to dubbed television, on English pro\u85ciency scores, which loosely corresponds to one and a half to four years of English education at school. We show that the translation mode and the resulting foreign language skills increase signi\u85cantly the foreign direct investment inows and outows, as well as the exports of goods and services