Description: This paper argues that the self-financing axiom with mild assumptions on the conditional expected returns yields a market with an eventual arbitrage. This is accomplished by minimizing the conditional variance of a trade when the conditional expectation is a fixed constant. Examples with common processes shows that most models yield an eventual arbitrage. As a final application, a cost model is applied to prices of stripped coupon and principal payments on U.S. government bonds, where rates of return are estimated and lower bounds on market costs given.

Description: This paper presents well-known results in the theory of dependent competing risks that are fundamental in extending multiple-decrement theory towards a dependent-decrement theory. From the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1994, Vol. 46.

Description: This paper develops the formula for estimation of multivariate copula. These results can be applied to the estimation of correlation coefficients. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994 Vol. 2 .

Description: This paper investigates salary functions as they are used in the valuation of pension plans. Pension actuaries may find many of the ideas in this article useful. Moreover, the paper may be interesting to researchers in actuarial science. The main conclusion of this paper is that salary functions, as derived from the parametric models, yield gains and losses that can be quite small and, in some cases, less variable than non-parametric methods. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1998, Vol. 1.

Description: This article discusses a continuous estimator of a mixing distribution. Specifically the estimator investigated is a mixture of gamma distributions whose parameters are calculated by considering the determinants of certain moment matrices. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 2.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to present a parsimonious parametric model that explains the pattern of mortality for select and ultimate mortality tables. Specifically, the author modeled the combined rates found in the 1965-70 ALB Basic Tables. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, VOL. 1.

Description: Develops a statistical procedure to fit bivariate distributions of claims in presence of covariates, which allows for a more accurate study of insureds' choice and size in the frequency and severity of the two types of claims.

Description: This paper presents a new method for blending census and Medicare mortality rates for the U.S. Decennial Life Tables. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1992 Vol. 2 .

Description: This paper describes how Markov chain Monte Carlo and related methods recently presented in the statistical literature can be used to quickly and efficiently simulate random draws from distributions with log-concave or nearly log-concave densities. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1995, Vol. 47.

Description: This paper presents a parsimonious 11-parameter model that explains the pattern of mortality for the female and male mortality rates of the 1975–80 Select and Ultimate Basic Tables. This parametric model is useful because it can predict the select mortality rates beyond the 15-year select period and because it can predict the select rates for issue ages greater than 70 years old. From the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1994, Vol. 46.