Description: The author discusses the review of a recent 2001 Wall Street Journal’s semiannual survey of economists’ forecasts, starting by asking if there is a simple way to summarize the results and to extract a consensus forecast, and from this extraction, determine when an individual forecast is significantly different from that of the consensus.This article is reprinted with permission. It last ran in the Jan. 10, 2001 issue of The La Jolla Economics newsletter.

Description: This article questions the validity of long term market return expectations using macroeconomics and analytical arguments.

Description: This presentation was made at the 1975 Spring Cincinnati Joint Meeting of the Conference of Actuaries in Public Practice and Society of Actuaries and it highlights the following issues: What are the retirement needs of a population?, what are suitable methods of providing social insurance, private pensions,and savings?, what are the political, economic, and sociological implications of various solutions?, and what perspective on this problem does Canadian experience provide.

Description: This session is about the major factors affecting economic growth in the next five to ten years with major focus on expected population shifts, labor force growth, productivity movement, inflation factors and major components of demand and the outlook for 1980 for wages and prices, and describes how that outlook could be affected by various government policies. An assessment will be provided of the inflation outlook for the decade of the 1980's. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 5, No. 4.

Description: This panel discussion session focuses on the impact of double-digit inflation on pension plans including the impact on assumptions, design, prefunding of post-retirement indexing and prefunding of flat benefit plans. From Record of Society of Actuaries 1980, Vol. 6, No. 4.

Description: Panelists of session 159OF of the New York Annual Meeting discuss the challenges of making money in a good economy. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 3.

Description: Latin America has acquired an economically strategic importance in the process of globalization that it did not have a decade ago. The region has attracted significant attention and investment by the international insurance industry. This article explores some issues related to the growth in supply of insurance companies capacity, the relatively slower pace of growth in consumer demand for their products, and the factors that companies can identify in forming their strategies to achieve their objectives.

Description: This panel discussion which was presented at the SOA's 1976 Spring Meeting in Washington D.C. focused on various pension plan issues which have arisen in difficult economic times in the mid-1970's.

Description: Noted speaker, author and political analyst discusses the cultures of Russia, China, and Japan, and how their cultures compare with ours from an economics perspective. Also discusses what we need to do as Americans for our economic future. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 4B.

Description: Overview on current trends in medical practice impacting the LTC insurance business with a focus on dementia, risk stratification, and predictive modeling.