In sub-Saharan Africa, HIV prevalence does not exhibit the same pattern of association with poverty as most other diseases. HIV programmes should also focus on the wealthier segments of the population.

CIRANO Le CIRANO est un organisme sans but lucratif constitué en vertu de la Loi des compagnies du Québec. Le financement de son infrastructure et de ses activités de recherche provient des cotisations de ses organisations-membres, d'une subvention d'infrastructure du gouvernement du Québec, de même que des subventions et mandats obtenus par ses équipes de recherche. CIRANO is a private non-profit organization incorporated under the Quebec Companies Act. Its infrastructure and research activities are funded through fees paid by member organizations, an infrastructure grant from the government of Quebec, and grants and research mandates obtained by its research teams.

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We introduce a special collection of papers on COVID-19 and international business policy that looks at the global policy challenge from different perspectives. The combination of confinement and protectionist measures including export bans, import tariffs and border closures that were introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic affect MNEs by increasing trade costs and amplifying the costs of communicating tacit knowledge. In this editorial, we draw specific attention to how these policies impact the heart of MNEs' activities-the knowledge-intensive intangibles. Physical distancing limits the face-to-face meetings that undergird the production of intangibles in large urban hotspots. At the same time, travel restrictions constrain MNEs' abilities to connect to and source knowledge from their foreign partners. Virtual conferencing has helped MNEs to cope with these challenges but it remains an imperfect substitute. A protracted public health crisis that would require limiting social interactions in the medium term might push MNEs to reconfigure their knowledge management strategies both locally and globally.

In 2013, China launched its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a large portfolio of infrastructure projects across 71 countries intended to link Eurasian markets by rail and sea. The state-led nature of the Initiative combined with its transformative geopolitical implications have conditioned the type of engagement that many governments and firms in host and third countries are willing to take in Chinese-funded BRI projects. Building on two theoretical streams that have originated in international political economy but have received growing attention in international business, varieties of capitalism and geopolitics, this perspective shows how a greater understanding of the institutional and geopolitical context surrounding BRI helps decipher the selection of host-country firms and third-country MNEs in Chinese-funded BRI projects. We portray firm selection in a BRI project as the outcome of a one-tier bargaining game between China and a host country. We show how institutions and geopolitics influence both the legitimacy gap of Chinese SOEs in a host country and the host country’s relative bargaining power, affecting the likelihood that host firms and third-country MNEs are selected in BRI projects. We also discuss the geopolitical jockeying strategies that these firms can adopt to influence the outcome of the bargaining game.

International business (IB) scholarship has developed a deep expertise in explaining how the international environment affects the behavior and strategies of firms, yet IB concepts continue to make limited inroads in policy circles. By comparing the fields of IB and international economics, I argue that a key reason behind this puzzle is that IB scholars have evolved into an epistemic community that builds on a frame of reference which is not adapted to policy practitioners' concerns. IB researchers have a strong focus on the performance of the firm from a private perspective, whereas policymakers are interested in the performance of countries or regions from a public or societal perspective. I discuss the steps that IB scholars need to take to translate their findings so that they become compatible with the societal viewpoint and therefore more readily useful to policymakers.

AIDS-related morbidity and mortality are expected to have a large economic impact in rural Malawi, because they reduce the time that adults can spend on production for subsistence and on income-generating activities. However, households may compensate for production losses by reallocating tasks among household members. The data demands for measuring these effects are high, limiting the amount of empirical evidence. In this paper, we utilize a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative data, including biomarkers for HIV, collected by the 2004 Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project, to analyze the association between AIDS-related morbidity and mortality, and time allocation decisions in rural Malawian households. We find that AIDS-related morbidity and mortality have important economic effects on women’s time, whereas men’s time is unresponsive to the same shocks. Most notably, AIDS is shown to induce diversification of income sources, with women (but not men) reallocating their time, generally from work-intensive (typically farming and heavy chores) to cash-generating tasks (such as casual labor).