Description: Abstract: A model for analyzing the probability and severity of default of sovereign entities and banks. The methodology analyzes the risks inherent in the investment of debt of sovereign governments and large financial institutions side-by-side, taking into consideration macroeconomic interactions among the sovereign fiscal and monetary authorities, the financial institutions, and the real economy. The signature aspect of the methodology is that it adapts a Merton-style default model to use explicit measures of sovereign assets and asset volatility.

Description: This session presented at the SOA's April 1976 Washington D.C. Meeting provides information on the impact of inflation on Life Insurer Income Tax and Tax Liability and the impact that the U.S. tax policy on investments, jobs and inflation.

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.

Description: This is a panel discussion session from the 1980 SOA Fall Meeting. It discusses the North American economy and how the economy will react during the '80s. From Record of Society of Actuaries 1980, Vol. 6, No. 4.

Description: This is a discussion of indexed coverages for individual contracts. It covers such topics as the history of indexed coverage in the U.S. and Canada and other countries and the possibilities for the ideal fully-indexed permanent life insurance and disability income plans.

Description: This session from the 1984 Toronto Meeting discusses the pressures generated by the U.S. deficit on the U.S. and other countries, the trade scene and U.S. policies such as deregulation. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 10, No. 4

Description: Chronically low interest rates are a reflection of macroeconomic trends. Care must be exercised in making assumptions regarding mean reversion.

Description: The author discusses the review of a recent 2001 Wall Street Journal’s semiannual survey of economists’ forecasts, starting by asking if there is a simple way to summarize the results and to extract a consensus forecast, and from this extraction, determine when an individual forecast is significantly different from that of the consensus.This article is reprinted with permission. It last ran in the Jan. 10, 2001 issue of The La Jolla Economics newsletter.

Description: This article questions the validity of long term market return expectations using macroeconomics and analytical arguments.

Description: Panelists of session 159OF of the New York Annual Meeting discuss the challenges of making money in a good economy. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 3.