Description: This article discusses how publicly traded companies fail to realize their full potential due to a lack of clarity in identifying which shareholders they are trying to serve, especially when viewing short term versus long term goals.

Description: Reports the results of one application of a Future Research technique-in this case, forecasting future economic variables.

Description: In this paper, the authors take an axiomatic approach to characterize insurance prices in a competitive market setting. Four axioms are presented to describe the behavior of market insurance prices. From these axioms it follows that the price of an insurance risk has a Choquet integral representation with respect to a distorted probability.

Description: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. This session examines financial, economic and traditional actuarial methodological approaches used for solving investment-risk problems.

Description: The Long and Short (Runs) of Investing in Equities by Peter Yoo from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, March 1999, Issue No. 32.

Description: Discusses the effects of inflation and the impact on business. This article sites several challenges that business will encounter during times of inflation.

Description: This essay explores the role that the emerging defined contribution retirement system may be playing in the growth of wealth inequality in the United States. The current system leaves many Americans with little or no retirement savings. Those with higher accumulation levels appear to invest proportionally more in equities, which may have an exponential effect of balances over long time periods. The author hypothesizes that willingness to take investment risk involves the relationship between the amount an investor has accumulated and what she/he needs in order to cover basic costs of living. This is one reason that investors with greater accumulation levels may be able to earn higher rates of return. The essay concludes by suggesting that the U.S. defined contribution system should include all workers and provide additional fiduciary guidance. Examples reforms, both in the U.S. and other countries, are provided.

Description: Some are arguing to require actuaries to fund public plans like an insurance company. It is not the place of the actuary to make this call.

Description: Great damage is being done to the U.S. economy as a result of the widespread misunderstanding that the Consumer Price Index measures changes in the cost of living.

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.