Description: This paper presents an introduction to collective risk theory. In collective risk theory one seeks to investigate directly the risk enterprise as a whole. Primary interest is focused not upon the gains, losses, or claims from individual policies but upon the amount of total claims or the total gain arising from all the policies in the portfolio considered. Followed by several discussion papers submitted.

Description: In this paper, a mathematical model is constructed to study the deviations of claims, investment performance, operating expenses, and lapse expenses as random stochastic processes. Discussions of the paper submitted by 2 readers follows

Description: This paper discusses the binominal financial and insurance models. In addition, the paper expands the discussion to the martingale probabilities measures for insurances, annuities, endowment insurances, and equity-linked products.

Description: This is an Excel 2003 spreadsheet that accompanies the research report entitled 'The Effect of Deflation or High Inflation on the Insurance Industry.' It models scholastically the effects of inflation and deflation.

Description: This paper introduces the symbolic valuation, a stochastic valuation which allows flexible interest rate and cash flow assumptions, and provides an illustration which values a simple SPDA product. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1992, Vol. 1.

Description: This research report on the effect of deflation or high inflation has six sections: 1. The first section provides background on inflation, describes some problems in measuring inflation, and explains some of its effects on an economy. 2. The second section reviews historical inflation rates. 3. The third section examines the effect of inflation or deflation on the property-liability and life insurance industries. 4. The fourth section proposes risk mitigation strategies for insurers to cope with either deflation or high inflation rates. 5. The fifth section describes a publicly available model that can be used to develop inflation/deflation projections under a regime switching format that can readily be adjusted to reflect current financial uncertainty. 6. The sixth section provides conclusions.

Description: This review summarizes the key features of a stochastic model that works with non-life insurance claim incurral, accrual and reporting. More specifically it provides an overview of the claim model components, classical parameter estimators, test statistics, and forecast point estimates and error variances. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, VOL. 1.

Description: This paper studies the tail probability of discounted aggregate claims in a continuous-time renewal model. For the case that the common claim-size distribution is subexponential, the authors obtain an asymptotic formula, which holds uniformly for all time horizons within a finite interval. Then, with some additional mild assumptions on the distributions of the claim sizes and inter-arrival times, the authors further prove that this formula holds uniformly for all time horizons.

Description: This section contains multiple book reviews and notices concerning the actuarial profession. Reviews: 'Medical Risks: Patterns of Mortality and Survival' by Singer and Levinson, 'The Theory and Practice of Pension Funding' by Trowbridge and Farr, 'Two Stochastic Processes' by Beekman, 'Disability Income Insurance - Cost Differentials between Men and Women' by New York Insurance Department, 'Social Security and Private Pension Plans: Competitive or Complementary' by McGill, 'A New Look at Accounting for Pension Costs' by Hall and Landsittel, '1977 Annual Reports of the Board of Trustees of the Federal OASDI Trust Funds...,' 'Investigation of Sickness Statistics - Individual Policies, 1971 and 1973' by the Institute of Actuaries and the Faculty of Actuaries, 'The Graduation of Pensioners and of Annuitants Mortality Experience 1967-70' by the Institute of Actuaries and the Faculty of Actuaries, 'Pensions and Survival - the Coming Crisis of Money and Retirement' by Calvert, 'Group Benefits in a Changing Society' by Spencer, 'Experience of Disabled Work Benefits under OASDI 1965-74' by Bayo and Wilkin. Digests also included.

Description: This paper represents a brief progress report on research, being sponsored by the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries, in the area of modeling of economic series. In particular, research is being undertaken to provide a foundation for the actuarial community’s modeling of a variety of economic variables, including interest rates, equity returns, inflation, unemployment rates, and real estate price levels. The specific objectives of this research are to provide a summary of the literature in the area of economic scenario modeling, identify data sources and methodologies in this area useful to the actuarial profession, and produce working software for economic modeling, including appropriate documentation, to be made available to the general actuarial community in order to allow actuaries to use and build upon this research. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2004, Vol. 1.