A panel of 134 countries over the period 1985-2010 is used to evaluate the effect of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on field crop seed imports from the United States. Based on estimating a gravity equation using the Heckman selection and Poisson fixed-effects panel econometric methods, the results indicate that membership of countries in both the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organization have a positive and statistically significant effect on their imports of U.S. field crop seeds. These results, however, are also sensitive to both income level of importing countries and better enforcement of IPRs by those countries. JEL classifications: F14, O34, Q17

Due to a lack of the realization mechanism and operational pattern of the urban-rural integration by land use, this study employs land use to regulate interface elements to achieve urban-rural integration development. Therefore, we analyzed urban-rural reality in Pukou District of Nanjing City, a typical metropolitan fringe of China, and investigated farmers’ willingness of typical representative villages. The results show that (1) According to the combination of resource environment, development intensity and development potential, Pukou District is divided into four land use areas, including optimization integration area, key development area, urban agricultural area, and ecotourism area. Most of the investigated farmers have a strong willingness to realize urban-rural integration by land use; (2) This study proposes an operational pattern of regional land use. The pattern is mainly based on “reality + willingness + policy” by using the three tools of “farmland reconsolidation, village reconstruction and factor reallocation”. It achieves urban-rural integration development through “zoning guidance–willingness driven–pattern selection–differentiated tools”.

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