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I-mode or internet compatible digital telephones have become an essential business or entertainment tool for people in Japan during early 2000.

We model the invention of new technologies and their diffusion across countries. In our model all countries grow at the same steady-state rate, with each country's productivity ranking determined by how rapidly it adopts ideas. Research effort is determined by how much ideas earn at home and abroad. Patents affect the return to ideas. We relate the decision to patent an invention internationally to the cost of patenting in a country and to the expected value of patent protection in that country. We can thus infer the direction and magnitude of the international diffusion of technology from data on international patenting, productivity, and research. We fit the model to data from the five leading research economies. A rough summary of our findings is that the world lies about two-thirds of the way from an extreme of technological autarky to an extreme of free trade in ideas. Research performed abroad is about two-thirds as potent as domestic research. Together the United States and Japan drive at least two-thirds of the growth in each of the countries in our sample.

This paper gives an overview of the current status of Japan's national industrial ceramic gas turbine (CGT) project. The goals are 42 percent and higher thermal efficiency at the turbine inlet temperature (TIT) of 1350 degrees C, and the emission from the exhaust gas should meet the regulatory values (for example, 70 ppm for NOx). Also, ceramic material properties have the goals of 400 MPa for the minimum guaranteed strength at 1500 degrees C, and 15 MPa square root of m for the fracture toughness. Currently, the basic metal gas turbine of TIT 900 degrees C with all metallic components has already been fabricated and is running under some test conditions. The design of the basic ceramic gas turbine of TIT 1200 degrees C has been completed and its manufacture is in progress. Research is addressing the production of large, complicated ceramic parts, and parts with less deformation and fewer defects can now be produced.

High technology in Asia includes new materials technology such as electricity-conducting glass, electromagnetic shielding glass, transparent magnets, magnetic plastic, photochromic plastic for computer memory, artificial skin, plastic filter for artificial kidneys and for industrial chemical separation, ceramics that are stronger than metals, magnetic enzymes, etc. In biotechnology the emphasis is on pollution-reducing micro-organisms and food fermentation technology more than on genetic engineering. Behavioural conditioning of fish to respond to music for feeding and for capture in the open ocean is practised. In mainland China, non-phonetic pictorial input keyboards have been developed, and the surgical use of lasers has been advanced. Cadmium pollution of rice is a problem in mainland China which has long rivers with factories upstream and farms downstream. Engineers from mainland China are a valuable human resource in Japan, especially for high technology venture firms. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Palo Alto, California. Two hundred business and academic leaders got together at Stanford University last month for a conference on the economics of invention. That was the official topic, but [...]