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The use of mobile health technologies (mHealth) to ameliorate HIV care has considerably risen in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) since 2010. Yet, the discrepancies in the results of accompanying studies warrant an updated and systematic consolidation of all available evidence. We report a systematic review of studies testing whether text/image messages, interactive voice response reminders, or calls promote adherence and retention to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in LMICs. We systematically compiled studies published in English until June 2018 from PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, WHO database, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and manual search. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2009 and used frequency analysis to assess reported findings. In total, we compiled 35 published articles: 27 completed studies and 8 protocols. Among the main 27 studies, 17 examine adherence, 5 retention, and 5 both measures. Results indicate that 56% report positive and statistically significantly impacts of mHealth on primary outcomes, the remaining 44% report insignificant results. While 41% of studies found a positive and significant effect for adherence, only 12% improved retention. The evidence shows ambiguous results (with high variability) about the effectiveness of mobile phone-assisted mHealth interventions to boost adherence and retention to ART. The literature also points to short follow-up periods, small samples, and limited geographical coverage. Hence, future research should focus on evaluating longer interventions with more patients spread across wider areas to address whether mHealth can be effectively used in LMICs.

This meta‐analysis reviews the intrasector heterogeneity of productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) in 31 developing countries through a larger more comprehensive data set. We investigate how the inconsistencies in the reported spillover findings are affected by publication bias, characteristics of the data, estimation techniques, and empirical specification, analyzing 1450 spillover estimates from 69 empirical studies published in 1986–2013. Our findings suggest that reported FDI spillover estimates are affected by publication bias. In combination with model misspecification of the primary studies, the bias overstates the genuine underlying meta‐effect, but the meta‐effect remains economically and statistically significant. Our results emphasize that spillovers and their sign largely depend systematically on specification characteristics of the primary studies and publication bias. Publication bias is not caused by “best practice” choices. Future research needs to cover more developing countries and to investigate not only whether spillovers occur, but also to explore inside the black box of how spillovers actually emerge.

The empirical literature on the spillovers of foreign direct investment (FDI) has so far not analysed the well-established theoretical transmission channels through which FDI impacts on domestic firms. This paper shows how channels of transmission matter for productivity spillovers from FDI by providing more fuller and nuanced picture of the effects. We analyse a panel of eight sub-Saharan Africa countries spanning the period 2006-2014 and demonstrate the empirical relevance of distinguishing three channelsdemonstration, labour mobility, and competition. We provide measures of these effects and also show that the size, significance, and sign of spillover effects depend on the local absorptive capacity, technology levels, geographical proximity, and foreign ownership structure. Overall, results suggest that demonstration spillovers are large and economically significant, whereas the patterns of labour mobility and competition spillovers are not stable across the various specifications and measures. Finally, the analysis involves several measures of further investigations and robustness checks. Results are robust to the construction of spillover and outcome variables, the introduction of additional explanatory variables and an alternative estimation method.