Description: Comments from Eric Friedman on “The Debate over Applying FE Principles to the Funding on Public Pension Plans: A Transition Proposal and Other Ideas,” by Thomas Lowman

Description: The standard for measuring retirement income adequacy has been the final earnings replacement rate (usually targeted at 70%). But - does it work?

Description: Eric Friedman’s comments on ‘The Case for Stochastic Present Values,” by Dimitry Mindlin

Description: The author delves into other important parts that should be in the scope of model validation besides the code.

Description: Author response to Eric Friedman’s comments on ‘The Case for Stochastic Present Values,” by Dimitry Mindlin

Description: This article analyzes and confirms the circumstances where a change in the mortality assumption does and does not have a significant impact on pension valuations.

Description: Book review of The Fundamentals of Pension Mathematics by Barnet E. Barin. Mr. Griffin supports the text as a valuable contribution in particular his analysis of gains/losses by source during the transition to utilizing computers for pension valuation.

Description: This article summarizes the approach taken by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries to develop mortality tables and mortality improvement scales for use in Canadian pension plans based on Canadian population data. It also summarizes the additional factors pension actuaries have to consider in using the new tables and scales.

Description: Review of Fifty-Second Annual Report of the Board of Actuaries of the Civil Service Retirement System. The authors found it to be a concise well written report discussing a number of issues facing all pensions in an inflationary economy. Both the title and the dull format in the usual Government Printing Office style would seem to insure this document's instantaneous consignment to dead storage. However, behind the cover of this small pamphlet is a concise, well written report discussing-a-number of the issues facing not only federal pension programs at the present time, but all pensions in an inflationary economy. For example, several of the 11 pages devoted to the main report discuss the implications of static assumptions ignoring inflation as opposed to dynamic assumptions including inflation.

Description: Overview of a recently published paper that explains how credibility theory can be applied to develop mortality assumptions for defined benefit plans.