Description: Article from The Actuary, June 1971 – volume 5 - Issue 6 is a recap of the LOMA Systems Forum held in New York, March 15-17, 1971.

Description: This paper examines tandem levels of salary and interest rates and finds that the absolute level of each assumption as well as the differential are significant cost determinants for defined benefit pension plans. In forming best-estimate salary and interest rate assumptions, the actuary must reconcile the difference, if any, between the currently observed rates and the valuation assumptions. Common practice is to choose expected long-term rather than observed rates for valuation purposes. The error in this procedure is analyzed and found to be tolerable for strictly temporary discrepancies between observed rates and valuation assumptions. For situations where these discrepancies are expected to persist for some time, a need is shown for nonuniform, calendar-year assumptions or their equivalent in order to develop best-estimate assumptions. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

Description: This paper presents the general notion of a periodogram, following Elphinstone's approach. The paper then goes on to examine symmetric linear operators and their periodograms in preparation for the end discussion of periodograms of graduators.

Description: The insurance reserve for an individual contract can be pictured as a quantity which changes continuously from moment to moment in response to the forces of interest and mortality. A different mathematical model arises for each method of defining the death benefit, and in this paper a number of such mathematical models are analyzed. Followed by discussion papers submitted by several authors

Description: This discussion examines the relationship of Operations Research to the actuarial profession, the extent traditional actuarial work can be regarded as Operations Research, types of life insurance company problems lending themselves to Operations Research study, and the relationship of electronic data processing field to Operations Research.

Description: Evaluation of the excess mortality element of the Group Conversion charge. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

Description: Appendix to the Critical Review of Stochastic Simulation Literature and Applications for Health Actuaries. The Development of a Simulation Model of Primary Prevention Strategies for Coronary Heart Disease

Description: This document provides answers to the exercises in the report titled Complexity Science – an introduction and invitation for actuaries:.

Description: Eric Friedman’s comments on ‘The Case for Stochastic Present Values,” by Dimitry Mindlin

Description: This paper develops an option pricing model that takes cost of capital concepts as its foundation rather than dynamic replication. The resulting model, called the 'C' measure in this paper, is related to the family of Affine Jump Diffusion models that are well known in the finance literature, so it is fairly easy to understand and implement. We argue that this is a reasonable model to use for estimating equity implied volatilities that are beyond the five- to 10-year horizon that can typically be observed in today‘s capital markets. The paper concludes with a short discussion of how to grade from observable market data to the 'C' measure.