Description: This article discusses how unemployment and underemployment information can help improve economic forecasts, insurance assumption setting and risk management. It summarizes the current modeling practices of unemployment which shows a deficiency of using unemployment/ underemployment information in actuarial works. It also gives three examples of using unemployment/underemployment information for economic assumption setting, new business growth prediction and stress scenarios related to the labor market.

Description: This paper examines the development of inflation and the dilemma the life insurance business faces. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1958, Vol. 10, No. 28.

Description: This session from the 1981 SOA Spring Meeting discusses how the insurance industry will fare under different economic conditions according to an economotric model by Data Resources - DRI. The session also reviews how to incorporate inflation into actuarial calculations and the prospects and possiblities regarding inflation. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 7, No. 2.

Description: Argues renewable energy will displace fossil fuels, leading to investment opportunities and risks

Description: A summary of the Global Trends 2030 report, the fifth such report produced every four years by the National Intelligence Council. The report is based on the research and analysis of the 17 major intelligence agencies in the US. The summary covers the highlights of the report.

Description: This article discusses how pension accounting has an impact on the personal savings rate.

Description: Evan Borisenko looks at previous challenging environments for the life insurance industry, such as the a period of severe stagnation in the 1930s, the increased inflation in the 1980s and a catastrophe like the Spanish influenza after the World War I. Evan explains that "while each event described above challenged the life insurance industry in a unique way, each event stimulated an equally unique solution." The article concludes that we "fight to repeat history" in a way that we as actuaries should be able to propose unique solutions with when faced with crisis in the future.

Description: Minor changes in the Internal Revenue Code would encourage corporations to use Trust Fund financing, thus fueling economic prosperity without population expansion. However, even without these changes, a number of companies have found that establishing an employee trust is the answer not only to their capital requirements, but also to their employees’ increasing demands for a “piece of the action.”

Description: A review of product and sales trends for variable, indexed and fixed annuities against the current backdrop of low interest rates and record equity market valuations

Description: This session is about the methods of projecting long-run stock returns using inflation rates from bond yield curves with incremental returns for risk taking based on historical data and the relationship between concurrent, expected and unexpected inflation rates and the rates of return on common stocks and U.S. government bonds and notes. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 5, No. 4.