Exploring European Cultural Goods Trade: A Multidimensional Perspective

Abstract

The increasing interest in culture and related industries has emerged as part of a new approach as regards national and regional development. Cultural and creative industries are considered to incorporate strong dynamics and potential for participatory and inclusive development. Therefore, the promotion of effective policies fostering the development and growth of the particular industries has social and economic benefits for broad groups of stakeholders. The trade of cultural goods is one of the dimensions of this debate. This paper demonstrates the use of Multidimensional Data Analysis methods in revealing latent groups of European countries trading cultural goods over a period of fourteen years (2002-2015). The methods of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HC) are applied on a multivariate matrix that takes into account not only imports and exports of such goods, but in a supplementary way, basic economic and educational variables, in order to detect and explore relationships among them. Furthermore, cluster analysis on MCA results is used to identify all groups of country-years sharing similar characteristics.