Cultural Diversity in the Movie Industry: A Cross-National Study

Abstract

For many years, the promotion and preservation of cultural diversity has remained a core issue in international debates about free trade. In this article we propose a framework to assess cultural diversity that is used to compare this diversity in the movie industry between 1990 and 2000 in the European Union, United States, France, Hungary, Mexico, and South Korea. Our main results are (a) the ranking of the countries is highly dependent on the dimensions of cultural diversity considered; (b) cultural diversity turns out to be higher in countries where the movie industry receives strong public support (France, European Union, South Korea); and (c) supplied diversity and consumed diversity are positively correlated, and the former is always higher than the latter. This evidence suggests that a policy that supports cultural diversity on the supply side seems to match consumers' preferences.