Description: This article discusses world economic and financial trends and how people can be fooled into thinking nothing can go wrong.

Description: This article, with some humor, describes a movement known as “econophysics” of physicists modeling economic systems, including capital markets, using techniques and concepts developed in studying the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of complex systems. A version of this article appeared in The Actuary UK in August 2004. Reprinted with permission.

Description: Feature article discussing the too big to fail principle and whether or not strong competition is ideal in terms of the banking industry.

Description: This paper discusses the martingale approach for pricing American-type options without an expiry date. These options include the perpetual American put option and the perpetual maximum option in one stock case. The word “perpetual” means that the option has no expiry date. A main tool in this approach is the principle of smooth pasting.

Description: Digests of following discussions: 1. Mutual life insurance companies - their objectives and operating philosophy 2. State, provincial, and municipal employee pension plans - financing and other problems 3. Mortality and underwriting of individual policies for large amounts 4. Investing during the 1970's 5. Long-range viability and regulation of corporate pension plans 6. Forecasting the environment for business 7. Liabilities and surplus in the 1970's 8. Changing modes of family life - work and income over the life cycle 9. The role of the actuary in collective bargaining 10. Health insurance in the United States 11. Adjusted earnings

Description: Explains that the conflict of two forces – a need for economic growth in a world that can no longer provide growing oil supply – sets the financial system up for a systemic risk of collapse.

Description: Essay stating Americans need to invent, implement, and evaluate sustainable health care policies, divert cash-flow streams away from projects which feed the beast and focus on projects and policies which enhance value. It will require a combination of thoughtful, coordinated policies and a change in our cultural expectations of infinite resources and unlimited choice.

Description: This article provides a retrospective on investment risk management while highlighting actuarial tools used by portfolio risk managers.

Description: The article makes reference to how the intervention by government agencies and institutions into the financial marketplace are creating distortions. This artificial tampering into market mechanisms will likely result in major financial dislocations down the road as natural economic forces (coined by the term "invisible hand") eventually are allowed to come into play.

Description: This article considers considers how the assumptions and statistical methods used to analyze investments are likely to change as a result of the events of Black Monday, October 19, 1987.