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: Ratio: Canada
Britain
France
Germany
“Our traditional way of life”
Lost/Strong
3.1
4.3
3.0
3.0
“American ideas & customs are spreading here”
Bad/Good
3.0
3.2
4.5
4.7
American music, movies, & TV
Like/Dislike
3.8
2.3
1.9
1.8
Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project (2007), author calculations
By large ratios, participants from Canada, Britain, France, and Germany feel that their traditional way of life is being lost. By similar ratios, the survey subjects expressed concern over adverse effects of American culture (“ideas and customs”) spreading into their countries. Nevertheless, a substantial majority of these same respondents like the audiovisual services they import from the US. The empirical question raised by these survey responses is whether the foreign media that consumers enjoy have the adverse impact of spreading American customs and undermining indigenous culture. If so, then there is a kind of “tragedy of the commons,” whereby individual consumer decisions deplete a collectively valued resource. According to this way of thinking, protectionism in audiovisual services protects consumers from the externalities they impose on each other. Alternatively, it might be the case that foreign audiovisual services can be “safely” consumed without negative side effects on domestic traditions. The American ideas and customs that cause concern may be political or economic rather than cultural.