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.

中文翻译：

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联合国教科文组织的文化多样性公约如何影响文化产品的贸易？

在就文化产品的国际贸易是否应成为自由贸易的例外进行了长期而激烈的争论之后，联合国教科文组织的《文化多样性公约》（CCD）于 2007 年获得通过并生效，以保护和促进文化多样性。本文首次对 CCD 对文化产品贸易的影响进行了实证评估。通过使用 2004-2010 年的贸易数据，并采用一阶差分差分法，我们估计了 CCD 的批准对文化产品进口和文化进口的广泛边际的影响。我们的估计结果几乎不能证明 CCD 是变相保护主义的工具。此外，我们发现 CCD 签约国比 CCD 非签约国更倾向于增加某些文化产品子类别的文化进口的国家利润率。这种变化意味着 CCD 有助于促进文化多样性。