Description: The purpose of this research is to analyze recent court cases that focused on excessive contributions to small defined benefit plans. The implications of the cases is important because it provides insight into appropriate paradigms for the funding of private retirement plans. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, Vol. 1 .

Description: It is common for a pension plan to be amended to improve benefits in respects of service after the date of amendment. This will be referred to as a non-retroactive amendment. The application of the entry age normal and projected unit credit cost methods to this situation requires that a decision be made about the way to handle such an amendment. In this paper, these two cost methods and their application to such an amendment are considered in turn. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, Vol. 1.

Description: This paper investigates salary functions as they are used in the valuation of pension plans. Pension actuaries may find many of the ideas in this article useful. Moreover, the paper may be interesting to researchers in actuarial science. The main conclusion of this paper is that salary functions, as derived from the parametric models, yield gains and losses that can be quite small and, in some cases, less variable than non-parametric methods. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1998, Vol. 1.

Description: This abstract describes a paper that proposes a stochastic population structure model based on the Leslie matrix, in which a Lee-Carter model framework is used to describe the future mortality and fertility changes.

Description: This paper explores the relationship between the Wealth Transfer Index, a statistic defined by Brown and Bilodeau 1997, and retirement age, which is the age at which the workers in an economy cease to be economically productive. There appears to be a strong positive correlation between the Wealth transfer Index and retirement age based on Canadian historical data.

Description: This poster describes the optimal investment and benefit payment problem for a target benefit pension with default risk and model uncertainty.

Description: This paper studies the variability of pension costs and fund levels under various funding methods. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1990, Vol. 1.

Description: This research paper investigates health care costs in the last year of life. This paper looks specifically at the issues of measurement of retiree health care costs when the baseline healthcare costs are measured in terms of the last year of life costs and maintenance costs.

Description: Private defined benefit pension plans must, by law, pre-fund the retirement benefits. This requires the periodic valuation of liabilities and calculation of contributions. Because valuation assumptions are seldom borne out by reality, a surplus [or deficit] ensues and varies over time. When the surplus becomes sizable, there often arises a desire to distribute part of it so as to bring it down to a more reasonable level. This paper provides a brief overview of cooperative game theory and, in particular, sharing rules. Then, using certain sharing rules, it determines how to split the surplus or deficit among the plan participants and sponsor. In general, the participant's share in the surplus depends on the total of his contributions. Other considerations, such as the actual investment income received on his contributions or the years of service, may influence the distribution of the surplus. It may even appear desirable to take account of the accrued liability. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1998, Vol. 1.

Description: This presentation proposes a new type of retirement plan aimed at achieving a compromise between stability in cost for the plan sponsor and guaranteed benefits for the participants. The proposed plan is shown to smooth out the fluctuation in benefits that occurs in a money purchase plan. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1998 Vol. 1.