International intellectual property rights protection and economic growth with costly transfer

This paper develops a product‐cycle model with costly technology transfer, which requires resources from both the North and the South. In the basic model, we show that strengthening intellectual property rights (IPR) protection induces a large technology transfer and narrows the North–South wage gap. However, we obtain an ambiguous result regarding the effect on economic growth, which depends crucially on the size of the transfer cost. Although strengthening IPR protection induces a high growth rate when the transfer cost is small, it can induce a low growth rate when the transfer cost is large. In the extended model, in order to examine what factors determine the transfer cost, we consider the situation where the Southern firms may misbehave and the Northern firms incur a cost to monitor them. We show that the degree of investor protection and the degree of morality in developing countries influence the size of the transfer cost, which affects economic growth.     

Non-traded inputs,interindustry flows,resource allocation and the ERP theory

This paper investigates the movement of gross outputs and resource allocation under the condition allowing for substitutability among various inputs within the framework of a simple general equilibrium model with both non-traded intermediate inputs and interindustry flows. Particular attention is paid to the sufficient conditions under which the gross output of the protected industry goes up and the industry attracts domestic factors under the Bhagwati-Srinivasan restriction on tariff change.     

Development of educational program for production manager leading new perspectives on manufacturing technology

In this paper, we consider the problems associated with the development and management of an educational program for manufacturing managers in leadership roles who are making contributions towards the creation of customer delight as well as customer satisfaction using manufacturing technology. The basic concept combines an intelligent knowledge-based approach with the kaizen activity program within the framework of value creation and comparative advantage models based on a network referred to as Academia, Business, Consultancy, and Government (ABC-G). This educational program, which reflects the characteristics of manufacturing technologies and practices in the Hokuriku District of Japan, was developed in 2005–2006 and the trial education was developed in 2005 and 2006, and a trial run of this program was conducted in 2006 and 2007 in close collaboration with local manufacturing companies and their employees. The results are informative of the effects of educating manufacturing managers in Japan and the problems that will have to be overcome for the continuous improvement of the program.     

The theory of effective protection in general equilibrium with interindustrial flows

The purpose of the present note is to demonstrate that the sufficiency condition of Bruno (1973) and Sendo (1974) on tariff changes is valid as an ERP index in the sense defined by Bhagwati and Srinivasan (1973), within the framework of the Bhagwati-Srinivasan general equilibrium model with two industries, even if we admit interindustrial flows.     

Lattice structure of knowledge and agreeing to disagree

This paper is a contribution to the study of the underlying mathematical structure of common-knowledge, which gives the well-known result of Aumann about the impossibility of ‘agreeing to disagree’. We present the Bayesian subjective probability model with player's belief: i.e. a triple (? %plane1D;4AF;, μ), in which i is a player. ? is a lattice in the field of sets of a state space Ω, %plane1D;4AF;, is a correspondence assigning to each state ω a filter %plane1D;4AF;(ω) in ?, and μ is a common-prior. For this model, we impose none of the important restrictions on the information structure in the Aumann-Bacharach model: axiom of knowledge K₁. axiom of transparency K₂ and axiom of wisdom K₃. We can extend both the disagreement theorem of Aumann and the agreement theorem of Geanacoplos and Polemarchakis under the assumption that each ? is an Artinian lattice.     

Current accounts of Japanese airports

The paper examines the current account of 41 major airports. When we exclude depreciation costs, only seven airports are profitable. When depreciation is excluded, only three airports are making profits. Airports managed by local governments are very difficult to sustain financially without subsidies. Airports with more than 5.2 million passengers are profitable when depreciation is taken into account, however most local airports have fewer than 2.5 million passengers. When depreciation costs are excluded, airports need at least 2.7 million passengers to be viable.     

Innovation by Heterogeneous Leaders*

We develop a Schumpeterian growth model in which leaders and followers conduct research and development (R&D) activities and in which leaders have different‐sized quality leads over their followers, and thus have different profit flows. We show that leaders with larger quality leads make smaller R&D investments; this result is consistent with the actual behaviors of some previous leader firms, such as Sony and Eastman–Kodak. Moreover, we show that subsidizing the R&D of followers can promote the aggregate R&D of leaders, because promotion of followers' R&D decreases (increases) the number of leaders with larger (smaller) quality leads and smaller (larger) R&D investments.