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: This study revisits and updates the termination experience of single family mortgages originated during the early 1980s under the purview of the FHA and insured under the FHA's Mutual Mortgage Fund Insurance MMIF. It also provides a summary of the lessons learned from the study.

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

Description: Noted speaker, author and political analyst discusses the cultures of Russia, China, and Japan, and how their cultures compare with ours from an economics perspective. Also discusses what we need to do as Americans for our economic future. From the 1988 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 14, No. 4B.

Description: Latin America has acquired an economically strategic importance in the process of globalization that it did not have a decade ago. The region has attracted significant attention and investment by the international insurance industry. This article explores some issues related to the growth in supply of insurance companies capacity, the relatively slower pace of growth in consumer demand for their products, and the factors that companies can identify in forming their strategies to achieve their objectives.

Description: This panel discussion which was presented at the SOA's 1976 Spring Meeting in Washington D.C. focused on various pension plan issues which have arisen in difficult economic times in the mid-1970's.

Description: This session from the 1982 SOA Spring Meeting discusses the recent economic environment, the changes in household economic activity, the effect of the continued high rate of inflation on the needs and responses of customers of financial security products and participants of non-insured employee benefit plans during their working years. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1982, Volume 8, No. 1.

Description: This session is about recent economic developments, including such developments internationally.

Description: Presented at May 2000 Spring Meeting. Experience on group and individual disability insurance has been historically sensitive to economic and demographic trends. In recent years, for example, the restructuring of the health care industry has caused major upheaval for many disability for many disability insurers. The panelists in this session speak in general terms about a variety of trends, such as the stock market, unemployment rates, interest rates, and the aging of the baby boom generation. They then turn specifically to the disability insurance market and speculate on how these trends may affect financial results.