Cultural and creative industries in Mexico: the role of export-oriented manufacturing metro areas

Abstract

This chapter analyses the relationship between the manufacturing industry oriented towards exports and the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) across metropolitan areas (MAs) in Mexico. To study this relationship, the authors advance a simple model that explains specialisation in (high-medium) manufacturing exports as a function of a set of CCI economic indicators at the MA level. The model is implemented through quantile regressions, and they find evidence that the effects of CCIs are quite heterogeneous. The analyses reveal that CCIs contribute to manufacturing exports only in those MAs with the highest levels of specialisation, and that cultural industries have a negative effect but mainly in the MAs where the agglomeration economic forces are weak. The authors suggest that these results run along the hypothesis that in Mexico there is a dual behaviour of the emergence of CCIs, one strongly associated with trade liberalisation and the other rooted in other factors linked with internal markets, tourism and cultural heritage