Since 1960 till 2012, there are only 22 research papers that used empirical evidence with randomised cross over studies for language design.

As of which, Class inheritance had 4 randomized controlled experiments. With a collection of other studies. That is mostly of the information I have come across.

There is a research paper on Java that looked at how programmers use inheritance. It's a interesting read and its a good source. (https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/16840)

I think Google published another paper looking at development time and I believe the result was the biggest time consumer for programmer was dependencies not necessary the programming langue.