Description: The zeta distribution with regression parameters has been rarely used in statistics because of the difficulty of estimating the parameters by traditional maximum likelihood. This is the abstract of a paper that proposes an alternative method for estimating the parameters based on an iteratively reweighted least-squares algorithm.

Description: The abstract for a paper that examines the history and current problems of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation PBGC. From The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Monograph, M-RS05-1 and The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Symposium, held July 14-15, 2005 in Washington, DC.

Description: An excerpt from the 2002 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds which describes the basic methodology and assumptions used in the estimates for the intermediate assumptions. Also, projections of program costs are presented under two alternate sets of assumptions.

Description: This is the Executive Summary of the results of a study, sponsored by the Society of Actuaries and the Actuarial Foundation, which assesses the extent to which retirement planning software programs help users understand post-retirement risks.

Description: The abstract for a paper that describes the history of traditional topics like actuarial cost methods and assumptions, the history of past inquiries into the dynamic and stochastic nature of pension costs, and the perceptions and concerns of pension actuaries of the past. Presented at The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure symposium held July 14-15, 2005 in Washington, DC.

Description: This abstract describes a presentation that highlights technological, demographic, cultural, criminal, regulatory, and global market changes that foreshadow threats to marketplace firms’ survival.

Description: A study of disability experience examines cost burden and degree of disability, and how these measures vary across different subpopulations.

Description: The author attempts to weave together biological and environmental explanations into the mathematical approaches developed over the past two centuries so as to, in the words of two earlier authors from the actuarial profession, reground the relationship of actuarial science with cellular biology and gerontology. Also examined is the extent to which increasing wealth and higher standards of education and health contribute to happiness.

Description: Article describing how the process and means for an actuarial education has changed over the years.

Description: This is the abstract of the paper 'A Stochastic Definition of Future Shares'. The traditional definition of actuarial future values and stochastic definition of Ramsay are discussed. A modification of Ramsay's definition is proposed and an application to life insurance reserves is presented.