Ruth Taplin is Director of the Centre for Japanese and East Asian Studies which won Exporter of the Year in Partnership in Trading/Pathfinder for the UK in the year 2000. She received her doctorate from the London School of Economics and is the author/editor of 11 books and numerous articles. She published Valuing Intellectual Property in Japan, Britain and the United States with RoutledgeCurzon in 2004 and is currently preparing Japanese Telecommunications Market and Policy in Transition for publication by Routledge. Professor Taplin has been Editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics for ten years. Currently she is a Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London and the University of Leicester.  She was recently appointed Visiting Professor at the School of International Business and Management, University of Warsaw, Poland.                                           .