Private equity (PE) firms are increasingly investing in healthcare, seeking short-term returns through market consolidation, price increases, asset sales, and financial engineering. Although PE is transforming the healthcare sector, many countries lack systematic data to determine whether a regulatory response is warranted. Using data from PitchBook, we document substantial and growing PE investment in health care across 25 of 38 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, totalling over 8,400 reported deals and $1.4 trillion in capital between 2013 and 2023. Outpatient clinics represent the dominant target of investment, while hospital and elder care sectors have attracted investments in select countries. Exploratory regression analyses suggest that PE firms are less likely to invest in countries with a social health insurance system and that PE deal volume is positively associated with health expenditures. Country-specific deviations from model predictions underscore the importance of unmeasured country-specific factors such as regulation, payment policy, and market competition. Eight case studies illustrate the operational, financial, and social implications of PE investments, as well as diverse regulatory contexts. Given the lack of disclosure requirements, a key policy priority for governments is to enhance transparency to enable effective monitoring of the financialisation of health care delivery.

Pretesting for exogeneity has become routine in many empirical applications involving instrumental variables (IVs) to decide whether the ordinary least squares or IV-based method is appropriate. Guggenberger (2010a, Econometric Theory, 26, 369–382) shows that the second-stage test – based on the outcome of a Durbin-Wu-Hausman-type pretest in the first stage – exhibits extreme size distortion, with asymptotic size equal to 1 when the standard critical values are used. In this paper, we first show that both conditional and unconditional on the data, standard wild bootstrap procedures are invalid for two-stage testing. Second, we propose an identification-robust two-stage test statistic that switches between OLS-based and weak-IV-robust statistics. Third, we develop a size-adjusted wild bootstrap approach for our two-stage test that integrates specific wild bootstrap critical values with an appropriate size-adjustment method. We establish uniform validity of this procedure under conditional heteroskedasticity or clustering in the sense that the resulting tests achieve correct asymptotic size, regardless of whether the identification is strong or weak. Our procedure is especially valuable for empirical researchers facing potential weak identification. In such settings, its power advantage is notable: whereas weak-IV-robust methods maintain correct size but often suffer from relatively low power, our approach achieves better performance.

Literature reviews are core parts of the research process with most conducted in the early research stages. The way a literature review is done can differ depending on the type of research, its aims and goals. This means some view literature reviews as best being done through a systematic approach that has set stages and ways to analyse the literature. This editorial article discusses the main reasons for literature reviews in terms of being helpful, educative and progressive. This is useful in furthering the way researchers collect, interpret and analyse data. As more business management researchers and practitioners utilise review articles it is important to remain vigilant about their purpose and usefulness to business practices.

Longevity risk significantly impacts the reserve adequacy ratio of annuity issuers, thereby reducing product profitability. Effectively managing this risk has thus become a priority for insurance companies. A natural hedging strategy, which involves balancing longevity risk through an optimised portfolio of life insurance and annuity products, offers a promising solution and has attracted considerable academic attention in recent years. In this study, we construct a realistic portfolio scenario comprising annuities and life insurance policies across various ages and genders. By applying Cholesky decomposition, we transform the portfolio into an uncorrelated linear model. Our objective function minimises the variance in portfolio value changes, allowing us to explore the impact of mortality on longevity risk mitigation through natural hedging. Using actuarial mathematics and the Bayesian MCMC algorithm, we analyse the factors influencing the hedging effectiveness of a portfolio with minimised variance. Empirical findings indicate that the optimal life-to-annuity ratio is influenced by multiple factors, including gender, age, projection period, and forecast horizon. Based on these findings, we recommend that insurance companies adjust their business structures and actively pursue product innovation to enhance longevity risk management.

This paper addresses the gap between theoretical modeling of cyber risk propagation and empirical analysis of loss characteristics by introducing a novel approach that integrates both approaches. We model the development of cyber loss counts over time using a discrete-time susceptible-infected-recovered process, linking these counts to covariates, and modeling loss severity with regression models. By incorporating temporal and covariate-dependent transition rates, we eliminate the scaling effect of population size on infection counts, revealing the true underlying dynamics. Simulations show that this susceptible-infected-recovered framework significantly improves aggregate loss prediction accuracy, providing a more effective and practical tool for actuarial assessments and risk management in the cyber risk context.

We propose and test a catering theory of earnings guidance. As predicted by our model, managers cater to reference point-dependent investor preferences by issuing excessively optimistic earnings forecasts if their investors have experienced poor stock returns. Moreover, earnings guidance is most biased when managers strongly discount future outcomes, when the stock’s payoff uncertainty is high, and when managers face low costs for issuing inaccurate forecasts. Catering via earnings guidance succeeds in moving stock market prices and induces mispricing which is partially corrected around the corresponding final earnings announcement.

Money and Edinburgh go back a long way. The Bank of Scotland was founded in 1695, just a year after the Bank of England. Three centuries later, the first edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (in 2007) confirmed what everyone had always assumed: second only to London in the UK, sixth in Europe. But how? This small city, its population only topping 500,000 in the twenty-first century, was far from the centers of power and finance, with only a modest trading and manufacturing base of its own. This paper marries fresh oral history from the city’s mid-twentieth century financial elite—that is, an Edinburgh before the Global Financial Crash—with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus in the relatively new paradigm of Historical Organisation Studies, treating the industry as a single unit across banking, life assurance, and investment management. This reveals their personal characteristics and demonstrates the “symbolic violence” which socialized them into absorbing and embracing both the values and practices of the organizations where they worked and the external structures, including professional bodies and, not least, the Church of Scotland, which helped maintain some of those values.

Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) accounts can help build financial capacity for people with disabilities as tax-advantaged savings vehicles designed for disability-related expenses. ABLE accounts might be particularly beneficial for low-income individuals with severe disabilities who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from the Social Security Administration (SSA), because funds deposited in ABLE accounts do not count toward the asset limits required to maintain monthly SSI benefits and access to healthcare. This paper investigates the potential savings and financial capacity of eligible individuals with disabilities who may benefit from the expansion of ABLE accounts. Utilizing the 2014–2017 Survey of Income and Program Participation merged with the 2014 Social Security Supplement, this study examines different levels of access to savings and financial assets – factors that may influence ABLE participation – among people with disabilities, particularly SSI recipients. Financial capacity is analyzed across three disability onset age groups: before age 26, ages 26 through 45, and age 46 and older, with particular attention to individuals in the second group, who will become eligible for ABLE in January 2026 when the onset-age threshold increases from age 26 to age 46. Findings from logistic and OLS regression analyses indicate that financial capacity is particularly weak among SSI recipients who are newly eligible for ABLE accounts, suggesting limited financial resources to open or contribute to ABLE accounts. Directions for further research on ABLE participation are discussed.

This study aims to understand if the American public supports five policies related to the involvement of healthcare providers in immigration enforcement efforts such as documenting legal status in medical charts to actively assisting immigration enforcement. We also seek to establish whether public attitudes are stable on this issue using an experiment highlighting the implications of these policies for immigrants, communities, and the broader public. To assess public attitudes, we fielded a survey (N = 6049) from 7 March to 26 March 2025. We randomly assigned respondents to one of six treatments highlighting various implications of these policies for immigrants and communities. We found a divided public on the topic, with a substantial number of Americans willing to blur the lines between immigration policy and the provision of healthcare. Respondents were most receptive to tracking the number of undocumented patients served and least supportive of assisting in detaining patients. We found substantial differences based on party affiliation and presidential vote choice but not personal connections or residence inside or outside of border states. Our findings suggest that a majority of Americans support some level of immigration enforcement in healthcare settings while public opinion on this issue is hard to move.