Private sector entities can invest in and own the means of healthcare provision, creating opportunities and risks for health systems. While private investment can enhance access to capital, promote competition, and foster innovation, it can also exacerbate incentives for providers to engage in supplier-induced demand, undue price increases, quality compromises, and ‘cherry-picking’ of the most profitable patients and services. Despite the growing presence of private investors in the healthcare sector, heterogeneity in investor types remains poorly understood. This limits the ability of policymakers to consider whether, and to what extent, regulatory intervention is called for in relation to different forms of investor-ownership. By drawing on principal-agent theory, this article begins to address this gap by presenting a typology of investor-ownership in health services provision. Examining the policy relevance of such a typology, we present a case study analysis of current regulations directed at ownership across five countries, representing different health system models. We find that regulatory frameworks that differentiate between types of for-profit investor-ownership are largely absent in Europe, but more developed in the US. We argue that growing private investments require a combination of entry regulation and behavioural oversight to better align the incentives of investor-owners with public health objectives.

This paper introduces an overlapping generations model to explore the interplay between economic growth, the environment, and endogenous technology adoption. Considering an economy with physical capital and publicly funded human capital, the analytical framework extends Prieur and Bréchet (2013, Macroeconomic Dynamics 17, 1135–1157) by incorporating the endogenous technology choice mechanism from Umezuki and Yokoo (2019, Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control 100, 164–175). The analysis focuses on how the choice of capital-intensive technologies impacts environmental dynamics. The model reveals complex equilibrium dynamics, driven by a core trade-off between individuals’ resource allocation on consumption versus environmental protection and firms’ technology decisions.

In two studies with 1,275 participants, we examine how values are associated with wine cues and how these associations shape selection across private and professional contexts. Building on signaling theory and identity economics, we propose a utility framework in which choice utility is a context-dependent function of alignment with the private self (personal values), the professional self (role values), and anticipated reputational returns to identity signaling. Signal interpretability depends on a shared code in which observable cues carry similar meanings for senders and receivers. Drawing on Schwartz's value theory, we find evidence that participants systematically attribute distinct values to three observable cues—bottle appearance, short narratives, and tasting notes. Our findings show that in private settings, individuals favor wines linked to self-transcendence and openness to change, whereas in professional settings they prefer wines associated with self-enhancement and conservation. These cross-context patterns suggest that observing wine choice provides a novel tool for researchers to indirectly assess both personal and work-related values. In this respect, our approach relates to revealed preference theory, which infers individual preferences from observed choices.

With population aging, the establishment of universal long-term care insurance (LTCI) has emerged as a critical policy issue. This paper examines the effects of China’s LTCI pilots on the physical accessibility of home and community-based services (HCBS) and specific services for older adults. Using three-wave panel data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), we analyze the rollout of LTCI pilots across different cities from 2014 to 2021, employing a time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) approach. Our findings indicate that LTCI significantly improves access to HCBS for older adults, particularly in personal daily care. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that LTCI has a stronger positive effect on the accessibility of HCBS for older adults with physical impairment, lower financial transfers from children, or living alone or with a spouse only, and the positive effect is more salient in regions with higher reimbursement for HCBS and more generous coverage. This study provides compelling evidence regarding the pivotal role of institutional design of LTCI in shaping older adults’ care-seeking behavior and system-level resource allocation. It offers nuanced insights into the evaluation of differentiated pilot programs across cities, which can inform the development of a uniform national LTCI policy and carry implications for other developing countries.

The pandemic crisis introduced an unprecedented supply-side shock that was global in scope. Despite historically high levels of prior sovereign debt and low bond yields, macroeconomic policy responses included monetised fiscal expansions of extraordinary magnitude. Conventional theory suggests that the combination of supply contractions with such expansions is inflationary, yet central bank discourse during the pandemic expressed little concern about inflation. Our theoretical analysis suggests the presence of strong inflation forces at the time, likely offset by continuing pessimism shocks, consumption constraints and expectations management. In prominent advanced countries over more than a century, monetised fiscal expansions are shown to have preceded inflation surges, most strongly following signature episodes like WWII.