With the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995, the United States farm subsidies had moved towards income support, reducing spending on price support measures. The explicit reason was that the WTO had held that the latter forms were more market distorting and had thus put limits on their spending. The new Farm Act 2014 has changed the orientation of farm spending in the opposite direction. Pricebased measures are back in focus, and the US seems less concerned about breaching its WTO limits.

The capacity of countries to take advantage of the patent system bears a relationship with their stage of development. This paper explores the relationship between economic development and domestic and foreign patenting behaviour. The study uses a unique data set covering 55 countries and 24 years. It determines the association of domestic patenting with gross domestic product per capita and openness to trade, and the association of foreign patenting with these variables and with foreign direct investment as a proportion of gdp.