Bridging Cultural Differences through Established Cross-Border Economic Relations

Abstract

Purpose: the paper aims to investigate if the countries that conduct cross border investments and trade are transferring their own culture to the host countries. Methodology: culture was represented by book collections’ data selected by the digital library LibraryThing. In total 2,569 book-titles that represent the 50 top books of 52 country-groups have been used as the study’s sample. Author’s Nationality was set as the country of influence. Statistical analysis was employed to measure if the book collections of LT users were of foreigner-driven or homoethnic-driven authorship. Findings: the most industrialized countries and the best exporting countries were the best performers in culture transferring. Statistical significance with the amount of the books traded abroad was found to (i) the outward FDIs in millions of $ (p=0.004), (ii) the stock of outward FDIs in millions of $ (p<0.001), (iii) the outward FDIs as GDP percentage (p=0.004), and (v) the export volume index (p=0.011). Regression analysis showed that outward FDIs in mil. $ (p=0.016) and outward FDIs stock in mil. $ (p<0.001) were significant predictors of a country’s success to transfer its own cultural product abroad. Originality/value: this research is addressed to a tangible cultural output, books, issuing the objectiveness in measurements.