Description: This is a summary of the talk given at the 27th Actuarial Research Conference regarding ruin theory. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 1.

Description: This article describes a couple of things can be done to speed up universal life calculations in a BASIC program. It describes how the calculation of year end fund value can be done in one pass instead of 12.

Description: This paper develops a parametric model for health care insurance claims using currently available software to fit parametric models to the data. Model selection is based on the Chi-squared goodness-of-fit test and a comparison of the empirical limited expected value function to parametric limited expected value functions. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 3.

Description: This paper presents a proof using the general mean value theorem that under specified conditions, the insurance premium for complete protection against a specified loss will decrease with increasing wealth. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, Vol. 1.

Description: This is an abstract of the paper entitled 'Estimation of Prior Density by Numerical Solution of Integral Equations' by R. Dalapatadu, H. Bowman and A. K. Singh. From ACTUARIAL RESEARCH CLEARING HOUSE, 1994 VOL. 1.

Description: This paper is concerned with the evaluation of the common portfolio management strategy which consists of delegating to different managers portions of the assets to be invested. This practice is shown to be close to optimal under the realistic assumption that the private signals of the financial experts are positively correlated. This is accomplished by comparing this multi-manager approach to an optimal investment policy derived under full information, within the context of a standard normal returns/exponential utility market timing model.

Description: This paper is written totally under present Indian conditions, but keeping an eye on the future, when there will be number of insurers, and this model can be applied to any condition where a number of insurers already exist. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to measure, from the point of view of a potential life insurance policyholder, the quality of the insurers and the variability between them so that it will be helpful for potential policyholders to choose their insurers according to their requirements.

Description: This paper describes a theory of long-term interest-rate trends that was propounded in 1899 by an actuary, Charlton T. Lewis. The paper then presents a preliminary examination of how well that theory stands up in the light of 20th-century experience. The purpose is to invite more thorough evaluation by any experts who find the theory possibly useful.

Description: Equity-indexed annuities [EIA's] are the fastest growing annuity products. An appealing feature of an EIA to its holder is that it contains path-dependent options which allow the policyholder to participate in favorable investment performance while maintaining a minimum guarantee on the benefit level. Studying the valuation problem of path-dependent options enables us to provide needed information to insurance companies on the costs of these options as well as investment strategy for their portfolios. The martingale approach by Gerber and Shiu [1994, 1996] enables us to solve some valuation problems in option pricing without knowing deep results in stochastic calculus such as the Reflection Principle and Girsanov Theorem. What is needed is the Laplace transform of certain distributions known by actuaries. This paper shows how to use Gerber and Shiu's approach to compute two defective density functions related to double barrier hitting probabilities of a geometric Brownian motion. The approach used here is simple and straightforward, and purely analytical. The authors then apply the formulas to value some exotic options whose payoffs are contingent on barrier hitting time.

Description: There are many investigations probing the relationship between health outcomes [such as mortality rate, fertility rate] and economic variables [such as rise in income] and other variables [such as level of education, availability of clean water]. Usually, these results are demonstrated using data from countries where economic conditions are improving over time along with health outcomes. This paper studies the links between health risks and the current economic conditions in Mexico where general mortality conditions improved during the period 1980-2000 but income fell.