Description: This article summarizes a series of surveys that explore how the public perceives retirement risks and manages related financial resources. It also provides examples of conflicting perceptions and behavior related to retirement and how retirees manage assets in retirement.

Description: Discusses the three complexity science sessions at the Annual Meeting that were sponsored by the Section.

Description: Behavioral Economics is the combination of psychology and economics that investigates what happens in markets in which some of the agents display human limitations and complications.

Description: This article brings forth a humorous discussion of fat executives stemming from the New York Times report which polled 15,000 executives showing that fat executives received less pay and are less likely to advance as quickly a lean persons.

Description: Average life expectancy has increased throughout the ages, but can this life expectancy trend continue indefinitely? From Reinsurance Section News, May 2005, Issue No. 55.

Description: The SOA Research Institute tasked the Workforce Science Institute to investigate how retirement benefit plans can affect a plan sponsor’s workforce and business results. The following is an interview with Rick Guzzo and Haig Nalbantian co-founders of the Workforce Science Institute who are the researchers on this project. The interview gives a helicopter view of the project as well as provides some “food for thought” on how retirement plans can be designed to produce an effective workforce.

Description: Summary of the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

Description: The science of behavioral economics explains shifts in social actions and behaviors. Behavioral economics studies how people actually behave in given circumstances—not what they did in the past or say they might do in the future, but how they are likely to behave now. It examines rational and irrational thought as well as unconscious motivations to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior. Could the insurance industry utilize behavioral economics as a way to potentially increase consumer desire to buy life insurance?

Description: This article discusses capital market cycles, specifically considering whether or not 2008 was a good time to buy. It concludes that “stocks have likely only recently entered the buying opportunity range on an aggregate basis. However, from a psychological and risk management perspective, we should strongly consider that stock prices will revert beyond the mean for many years, perhaps even decades, before they get better.”

Description: Review the Letter from the Editor for the May 2017 issue of NewsDirect.