Cost asymmetry indicates that costs decrease to a lesser extent when sales decline than costs increase when sales rise by the same magnitude. This asymmetric sensitivity of costs to activity changes is denoted as “cost stickiness” (Anderson et al. in J Account Res 41:47–63, 2003). Prior studies on cost analysis identify resource adjustment costs and managerial discretion as fundamental drivers of asymmetric cost behavior. This study examines whether linguistically induced time perception arising from future time reference in languages relates to the asymmetric sensitivity of costs to activity changes. We find that asymmetric cost behavior is more pronounced for firms located in countries whose languages do not require future events to be grammatically marked. Our evidence suggests that time encoding in languages influences speakers’ cognition, their resource adjustment decisions, and the cost behavior of firms they manage.

成本不对称性表明，当销售额下降时，成本下降的程度要小于当销售额上升相同幅度时成本的上升幅度。成本对活动变化的不对称敏感性称为“成本粘性”（Anderson等人，J Account Res 41：47-63，2003）。先前对成本分析的研究将资源调整成本和管理自由度确定为不对称成本行为的根本驱动因素。这项研究检查了语言中由未来时间参考引起的语言诱导的时间知觉是否与活动变化的成本不对称敏感性有关。我们发现，对于位于其语言不需要在语法上标记未来事件的国家/地区的公司而言，非对称成本行为更为明显。我们的证据表明，语言中的时间编码会影响说话者的认知，