Private Equity, Consumers, and Competition: Evidence from the Nursing Home Industry
研究了产品市场竞争如何影响私募股权收购对消费者的作用，发现私募股权拥有的养老院在竞争激励强时更积极竞争，弱时更滥用市场力量，并建议监管者关注收购方的竞争敏感性和市场集中度。
This paper studies how product market competition shapes the impact of private equity (PE) acquisitions on consumers. We examine nursing home buyouts and observe that PE-owned facilities exhibit greater competitive sensitivity: competing more aggressively when competitive incentives are strong and exploiting market power more aggressively when competitive incentives are weak. We find that PE-owned facilities are more sensitive to local market competition—even when comparing effects only across facilities purchased as part of the same acquisition—and are more responsive to a pro-competitive policy helping consumers compare facilities. This suggests that regulators should attend to the competitive sensitivity of acquirers and the concentration of markets where acquisitions occur, as well as consider pro-competitive policies to mitigate or even reverse PE’s potentially adverse consequences. This paper was accepted by Carrie Chan, healthcare management. Funding: This work was supported by the UCLA Price Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the UCLA Fink Center for Finance and Investment. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01486 .