Kai Chan – The Power Language Index

The below is my presentation at LangFest 2018.

There are over 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, but some 2,000 of them count fewer than a thousand speakers. Moreover, just 15 of them account for half of the languages spoken in the world. Which are the world’s most influential languages? The Power Language Index (PLI) is a measure of a language’s efficacy by measuring its influence in 5 domains (“opportunities”): (1) geography, (2) economy, (3) communication, (4) knowledge & media, and (5) diplomacy. Altogether the PLI uses 20 (cardinal) indicators to arrive at an assessment of the power of over 100 languages.

Dr Kai L. Chan is a Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD. Previously he was a special adviser to the UAE federal government on competitiveness and statistics, where he focused on that country’s positioning on global performance indices.

Prior to his stint in the UAE, Dr Chan served as an associate and the in-house economist for a consumer finance merchant banking firm in Manhattan. Before that, he worked in the Singapore office of a global management consulting firm. Chan’s expertise/research cover education, income distribution, migration, government & policy, and performance measurement. He is the creator of the Power Language Index, Gender Progress Index, and Intelligence Capital Index.

Dr Chan holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and PhD from Princeton University. Kai grew up in Toronto, Canada, but currently resides in Montreal. He speaks English, French, Cantonese, Mandarin and German, and is currently learning Russian.

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