How does UNESCO’s Convention on Cultural Diversity affect trade in cultural goods?

After a long and heated argument on whether international trade in cultural goods should be an exception to free trade, UNESCO’s Convention on Cultural Diversity (CCD) was adopted and entered into force in 2007 to protect and promote cultural diversity. This paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of CCD on trade in cultural goods. By using trade data for 2004–2010 and employing the first-differenced difference-in-differences method, we estimate the effects of ratifying CCD on the imports of cultural goods and on the extensive margin of cultural imports. Our estimation results provide little evidence that CCD is an instrument of disguised protectionism. Furthermore, we find that CCD contracting countries tend to increase the country margins of cultural imports for some subcategories of cultural goods more than CCD non-contracting countries. This change implies that CCD contributes to the promotion of cultural diversity.