Description: This Fellowship credit research paper describes the use of fuzzy sets applications to the selection of group health risks. In general, fuzzy set theory is implemented to describe collections of objects whose boundaries are not precisely defined, as in the judgment of what constitutes a good risk group. First, single-plan underwriting is considered, then the work is extended to multiple-option plans.

Description: This paper is an attempt to examine transmission and incubation period models. Results are used to estimate the risk of HIV+ exposure of an individual company and the resulting reserve needs. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1989, Vol. 41.

Description: This paper develops a formal framework to model the behavior of individual and small group health insurance policies in a competitive market. In this framework, anti-selective lapse is not assumed, but arises as a result of rational consumers seeking the best value in a competitive market where the premium rates are restricted by law. The authors obtain a model that addresses a number of fundamental questions which have not been fully answered previously, including the effect of price-induced anti-selective lapse on the mix of insureds in a block and the optimal renewal price to maximize the aggregate profit of a block.

Description: This paper discusses the rectangulatization of the survivorship curve and some related puzzling deviations between expectations and observations. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, VOL. 2.

Description: This paper presents an algorithm for approximating the probability of ruin for a Poisson process - which is often used to model an aggregate claims process.

Description: This is the abstract for the referenced paper on the subject of Lundberg bounds on the tails of compound distributions. From ACTUARIAL RESEARCH CLEARING HOUSE 1980 VOL. 2.

Description: Genetic algorithms [GAs] and neural networks [NNs] are currently being used in actuarial and financial modeling. Nonetheless, while there is a general awareness of the nature of these techniques, there is often only vague familiarity with the details of how they are implemented. This paper is intended to help alleviate this situation. Its purpose is to present an overview of GAs and NNs, which includes an explanation of what they are, how they work, and an example of how they are implemented.

Description: It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate in a mathematically rigorous manner that compound interest as usually understood is uniquely given by [l+i]^t for all real t.

Description: Option bounds are obtained in a discrete-time framework with transaction costs. The model represents an extension of the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial option pricing model to cover the case of proportional transaction costs. The method proceeds by constructing the appropriate replicating portfolio at each trading interval. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, VOL. 1.

Description: The objective of this paper is to present and to apply a numerical method in the calculation of the minimal and maximal ultimate ruin probabilities in two risk models given some moment constraints on the individual claimsize distribution. An application of this optimization problem is to find the extremal lower and upper bounds of the ultimate ruin probabilities given those constraints. The paper considers the classical risk models with constant and variable premiums.