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Despite their unprecedented growth, developing countries still face severe problems in the provision of collective goods. Electricity, whose provision is scarce or unreliable in most developing regions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is an emblematic case. The reason for this shortage is not only imputable to the lack of effective formal institutions, but also to the inefficacy of informal institutions in enabling alternative solutions for the production, transmission and distribution of electricity. In this context of "double institutional void", multinational enterprises (MNEs) can play a decisive role. However, we claim that their effectiveness depends on both the formal and informal institutional proximity that exists between the country of origin and the destination of the multinational company. Our econometric analysis relies on a sample of pairs of home-host countries, the latter of which are all from sub-Saharan Africa, observed from 2005 to 2011. Our findings confirm our expectations.

This paper examines the role that multinational enterprises (MNEs) and foreign direct investments (FDI) can have in enhancing the access to electricity for local communities in developing countries based on the quality of home and host institutions. Access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing countries. The shortage of electricity is mainly the consequence of the inability of governments in planning, financing and developing necessary electricity infrastructure. In this context, investments from other actors can be essential. Particularly, in this paper we focus on the role of FDI and MNEs. We claim that when MNEs invest in developing countries, they are incentivized to solve the lack of electricity infrastructure mainly for two reasons: to guarantee their business activities and to gain legitimacy with their local stakeholders. In addition, we argue that MNEs and FDI from institutionally underdeveloped countries will be more prone to develop infrastructure for the provision of electricity to local population, as generally they suffer from a negative stereotype. For this study, we rely on 1547 observations composed of pairs of 83 home countries and 15 host countries in sub-Saharan Africa, observed from 2005 to 2011. Due to the nature of the database, we adopt panel data techniques, i.e., system-GMM and corrected Least Square Dummy Variable estimators. We find that FDI promotes access to electricity in developing countries with weak institutions and that this is more likely true when FDI comes from institutionally underdeveloped countries. These results are far from obvious, as they controvert the common idea among institutional scholars that a regulatory authority is essential in the provision of infrastructure. In conclusion, with this paper we partially rehabilitate the image of MNEs investing in developing countries, by demonstrating that - under certain conditions - they could contribute to the energy poverty alleviation of local population.

AbstractPeople constantly process temporal, numerical, and length information in everyday activities and interactions with the environment. However, it is unclear whether quantity perception changes during ageing. Previous studies have provided heterogeneous results, sometimes showing an age-related effect on a particular quantity, and other times reporting no differences between young and elderly samples. However, three dimensions were never compared within the same study. Here, we conducted two experiments with the aim of investigating the processing of duration, numerosity and length in both healthy and pathological ageing. The experimental paradigm consisted of three bisection tasks in which participants were asked to judge whether the presented stimulus (i.e. a time interval, a group of dots, or a line) was more similar to the short/few or long/many standards. The first study recruited healthy young and elderly participants, while the second recruited healthy elderly participants and patients with Parkinson's disease, a clinical condition commonly associated with temporal impairments. The results of both experiments showed that discrimination precision differed between domains in all groups, with higher precision in the numerosity task and lower sensitivity in judging duration. Furthermore, while discrimination abilities were affected in healthy elderly and, even more so, in Parkinson's disease group, no domain-specific impairments emerged. According to our research, reduced discrimination precision might be explained by an alteration of a single system for all quantities or by an age-related general cognitive decline.

Stroke is the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide and its burden is increasing rapidly in low-income and middle-income countries, many of which are unable to face the challenges it imposes. In this Health Policy paper on primary stroke prevention, we provide an overview of the current situation regarding primary prevention services, estimate the cost of stroke and stroke prevention, and identify deficiencies in existing guidelines and gaps in primary prevention. We also offer a set of pragmatic solutions for implementation of primary stroke prevention, with an emphasis on the role of governments and population-wide strategies, including task-shifting and sharing and health system re-engineering. Implementation of primary stroke prevention involves patients, health professionals, funders, policy makers, implementation partners, and the entire population along the life course.