Over the last 2 decades, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have become the most preferred strategic tool of firms in the media industry. As still claimed by analysts and managers, M&A deals are expected to generate greater economic efficiency, especially through size effects (economies of scale and scope and other synergies). However, it seems that the hopes placed in these synergies are generally disappointed. Indeed, among a sample of 11 media firms for fiscal years 1998 and 1999, it appears a firm's size and a simultaneous presence in many businesses of the media industries do not improve economic performance, nor does the possession of complementary assets. The existence of economies of scale and scope, or at least the ability of firms to implement them, has still to be proved. Inversely, the internationalization rate of firms, especially for non-U.S. firms, and their level of focus on the media industries both appear to improve economic performance. These results, based on data available when AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal M&A deals took place, raise the issue of the economic rationality of such mergers.

For many years, the promotion and preservation of cultural diversity has remained a core issue in international debates about free trade. In this article we propose a framework to assess cultural diversity that is used to compare this diversity in the movie industry between 1990 and 2000 in the European Union, United States, France, Hungary, Mexico, and South Korea. Our main results are (a) the ranking of the countries is highly dependent on the dimensions of cultural diversity considered; (b) cultural diversity turns out to be higher in countries where the movie industry receives strong public support (France, European Union, South Korea); and (c) supplied diversity and consumed diversity are positively correlated, and the former is always higher than the latter. This evidence suggests that a policy that supports cultural diversity on the supply side seems to match consumers' preferences.

Despite the lack of a clear definition of the concept, “cultural diversity” has remained a core issue for more than a decade (WTO, UNESCO, etc.). The aim of this paper is to begin to fill this gap. We argue that cultural diversity is a multi-dimensional concept and that accurate metrics must rely on three criteria: variety, balance and disparity. We also stress that supplied and consumed diversity have to be distinguished. We apply this set of multiple measures of diversity to publishing data for France over the period 1990–2003. Our main result is that the situation of the publishing industry in terms of cultural diversity is highly dependent on the dimension considered. Hence, diversity increases when variety is the sole consideration, whereas taking balance or disparity into account leads to the opposite conclusion. This issue raises a series of questions about the use of diversity measures in a policy debate concerned with furthering cultural diversity. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007L82, Z11, Books, Publishing industry, Diversity, Diversity measures, Cultural diversity, Cultural economics,