Title: Cultural imports, foreign influences, and domestic traditions | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal
Headings: 
The importance of culture
What’s in a name?
Foreign media’s influence on names
References

Content: Both Canada and the EU have exempted cultural goods from recent bilateral trade agreements. The importance of culture
What accounts for the resistance to audiovisual service imports? One explanation would be that this sector, like agriculture, is one in which a relatively small number of domestic producers have proven themselves to be politically effective in lobbying for protection. An alternative explanation – pursued in recent applied theory papers – emphasises that audiovisual service import restrictions are directed at cultural goods. Many of these theories develop the idea that an individual’s decision to consume foreign cultural goods imposes a negative externality on other consumers. In a pioneering investigation, Francois and van Ypersele (2002) modelled the externality as being mediated by increasing returns in the production of cultural goods. The idea is that imported cultural goods might crowd out domestic alternatives, leaving some consumers (those that highly value the domestic version) worse off. More recent investigations by Janeba (2007), Rauch and Trindade (forthcoming), and Olivier et al. ( 2008) have built the externality between consumers directly into the utility function. The first three papers find that restrictions on trade in cultural goods can be welfare-improving.