Description: Highlights a new research paper on determining discount rates for pension plans, by John Turner. The paper breaks new ground on deciding on the appropriate discount rate for untradeable benefit obligations, with a comprehensive summary of the field.

Description: Introduction to option pricing, with special attention to issues in applying these tools to price equity-linked insurance products. Clear, accessible explanation of key results of mathematical finance including risk-neutral valuation.

Description: Argues public plans should only hold bonds, on the basis of tax and finance arguments.

Description: Provides an example of using numerical methods to estimate the credit risk spread curve from sparse historical data. Applies Baysian and Normal models. Uses Gibbs sampling and Rejection sampling methods for multivariate estimates. Critically evaluates these techniques.

Description: By necessity, attributions of financial processes require approximations. Tools used for approximations include Aumann-Shapley, time step, step-through, average step-through, partial derivative, and average partial derivative. Significantly non-linear paths can cause problems during attribution. Time (theta) and market factors must be handled concurrently. Typically contractual factors can be handled separately. Average Step-Through, Aumann-Shapley and Aumann-Shapley-3 points perform the best given the same time period. Attribution should be done with fairly small time steps as opposed to using a lot of points in the Aumann-Shapley calculation, but using Aumann-Shapley-3 points as a last step has some advantages.