Intellectual Property Rights Protection and Imitation - An empirical examination of Japanese FDI in China -

By using the data obtained from a questionnaire survey to the Japanese firms in China this paper empirically examines the effects of the IPRs protection against local illegal imitation. No evidence has been found in the test that the patent and trademark registration, which constitutes a part of the whole IPRs protection system, has protective effect. To the contrary the results suggest that the patent and trademark registration system may play a role in facilitating local illegal imitation and may be mediate technology transfer/diffusion in China.IPR, Patent, Imitation, Technology diffusion, FDI

Commercial Culture, Political Culture and the Political Economy of Trade Policy: The Case of Japan

In this paper we present a model of endogenous trade-policy formation which captures crucial aspects of the Japanese commercial and political culture. We analyze the influence of the portrayed cultural traits and show that cultural idiosyncrasies are important determinants of trade policy formation; especially the complex interaction of the two types of cultures is shown to have significant consequence for the policy outcome. Contrasting our model's behavior with the stylized facts of Japanese politics, we arrive at the conclusion that the model's behavior is compatible with the observed (trade) policy positions held by Japanese politicians over the last fifty years.

Common property resource and private capital accumulation with random jump

In [6], Long and Katayama presented a model of exploitation of a common property resource, when agents can also invest in private and productive capital. They considered the case where the resource extracted from a common pool is non-renewable. In this paper, we try to extend their result to the case where the common pool is under uncertainty in the sense that it could have a sudden increase or decrease in the process of extraction and moreover we shall calculate the exhaustion probability.common property resource, private capital accumulation, pure jump process, exhaustion probability, HJB (Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman) equation

Cost Heterogeneity and the Destination of Foreign Direct Investment

This paper first of all develops a theoretical model to examine a number of heterogeneous firms' choice between making export-oriented foreign direct investments (FDI) in a host country and making FDI in another country to serve the market there. It is shown that all firms below a critical level of efficiency invest in the first country, and the other relatively more efficient firms invest in the second host country. The hypothesis is tested using firmlevel data on 118,300 Japanese firms covering the entire manufacturing sector. Multinomial logit estimates strongly support our theoretical findings.Cost heterogeneity, Oligopoly, Foreign direct Investment, Export-oriented FDI

Non-Smooth Sustainable Development With Overshooting

We show that, in a model with substitutability between capital and resources, the path of sustainable development may be non-smooth, and may exhibit the overshooting property: starting from low levels of capital and resources, the economy may accumulate capital beyond its steady-state level, before converging to it in finite time. Nous démontrons que, dans un modèle avec la substitution entre le capital et les ressources naturelles, le sentier du développement peut être non-monotone. Si l’on commence avec un niveau faible de capital et de ressources naturelles, le sentier optimal peut dépasse le niveau du capital de l’état stationnaire. La convergence s’effectue en temps fini.sustainable development, renewable resources, développement soutenable, ressources naturelles renouvelables

Commercial Culture, Political Culture and the Political Economy of Trade Policy: The Case of Japan

In this paper we present a model of endogenous trade-policy formation which captures crucial aspects of the Japanese commercial and political culture. We analyze the influence of the portrayed cultural traits and show that cultural idiosyncrasies are important determinants of trade policy formation; especially the complex interaction of the two types of cultures is shown to have significant consequence for the policy outcome. Contrasting our model's behavior with the stylized facts of Japanese politics, we arrive at the conclusion that the model's behavior is compatible with the observed (trade) policy positions held by Japanese politicians over the last fifty years

Cost Heterogeneity and the Destination of Foreign Direct Investment

This paper first of all develops a theoretical model to examine a number of heterogeneous firms’ choice between making export-oriented foreign direct investments (FDI) in a host country and making FDI in another country to serve the market there. It is shown that all firms below a critical level of efficiency invest in the first country, and the other relatively more efficient firms invest in the second host country. The hypothesis is tested using firm-level data on 118,300 Japanese firms covering the entire manufacturing sector. Multinomial logit estimates strongly support our theoretical findings

Detection of Fibronectin-Binding Proteins in Clostridium perfringens.

Clostridium perfringens is an anaerobic spore-forming pathogen of humans and animals. C. perfringens type A strains, 13, CPN50, and NCTC8237, isolated from human gas gangrene, bound specifically to human fi bronectin (Fn). The trypsin-treatment of the bacterial cells significantly reduced the Fn-binding. A ligand blotting analysis of all three C. perfringens strains revealed that 5 protein bands of 34 kDa, 29 kDa, 26 kDa, 17 kDa, and 12 kDa specifically bound to biotinylated Fn. These results suggest that C. perfringens possesses certain Fn-binding proteins on the cell surface

Phased A-tracts bind to the α subunit of RNA polymerase with increased affinity at low temperature

AbstractPreviously we showed that the expression of a Clostridium perfringens phospholipase C gene (plc) is activated by promoter upstream phased A-tracts in a low temperature-dependent manner. In this paper we characterize the interaction between the α subunit of C. perfringens RNA polymerase and the phased A-tracts. Hydroxyl radical footprinting and fluorescence polarization assaying revealed that the α subunit binds to the minor grooves of the phased A-tracts through its C-terminal domain with increased affinity at low temperature. The result provides a molecular mechanism underlying the activation of the plc promoter by the phased A-tracts