The Impact Of Economic Development On Cultural Diversity

With the rapid development of economy globalization and the increasingly frequent cross-cultural communication, cultural goods have achieved an increasingly important role in international trade. However, the emerging geographical imbalance of cultural flow leads several developed countries to a dominant position in the global cultural trade. While the share of world’s cultural trade is quiet low for developing countries. Theoretical research shows that the consumption of cultural goods have a tendency to be homogeneous, which will be a threat to domestic culture industry, especially for developing countries. This paper mainly research on the impact of economic development on cultural diversity based on the geographical diversity dimension. This study can not only provide theoretical basis for the relationship between economic development and cultural diversity, but also provide some references for China’s cultural import and export policy making.Referring to the measurement of concentration, we build different indicators to measure cultural diversity, like Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, Gini Coefficient, Theil index, etc. We select 32 developed countries and 109 developing countries to compute and compare these indicators using the imports data of music products from 1998-2011. The data we use is from CEPII-BACI database, and the music products we choose is based on the HS1996 six level code criteria. On this basis, we use nonparametric estimation method and static panel regression method to exam that to what extent dose economic development have impact on cultural trade diversity. We also give some reasonable theoretical explanation for the empirical results.The major findings and contributions of this paper are:(1) Import of music products by developed countries is more diversified than developing countries. Developed countries gain higher diversification of cultural import by trade growth mainly from existing partners. While developing countries gain cultural diversification mainly by looking for new trade partners. (2)Income appears to have a non-linear impact on diversification. When the income level is relatively low, an increase in income leads to a diversification of the varieties consumed. However, as the income level rises and passes a threshold value, there will be a reconcentration on a small number of partners. The reconcentration pattern appears to favour the share of American cultural goods. (3) The consumption of cultural goods will actually experience three stages:experiencing stage, learning and choosing stage, passively accepted stage. Consumption of cultural goods presents different characteristics during these stages, and this leads to the non-linear relationship between income and cultural diversity.According to the above conclusions, we propose several policy recommendations from both import and export aspect combined with China’s reality, and point out the future research direction as well.