Description: Learn more about improving the modelling of individual decisions.

Description: This paper provides a high-level review of climate models for the actuary and shows they are not impenetrable, intriguing the reader enough to seek out additional resources.

Description: To expand our understanding of the theory of behavioral economics and its application to life and health insurance policyholder and annuitant behavior, the Society of Actuaries' Committee on Knowledge Extension Research, Committee on Life Insurance Research and the Financial Reporting Section issued a call for papers, inviting actuaries, academics, economists, psychologists, sociologists, researchers and other professionals to explore this topic from a variety of perspectives.

Description: This is the User's Guide that accompanies the Inflation Generator Excel spreadsheet which is associated with the research report entitled 'The Effect of Deflation or High Inflation on the Insurance Industry.'

Description: This research report on the effect of deflation or high inflation has six sections: 1. The first section provides background on inflation, describes some problems in measuring inflation, and explains some of its effects on an economy. 2. The second section reviews historical inflation rates. 3. The third section examines the effect of inflation or deflation on the property-liability and life insurance industries. 4. The fourth section proposes risk mitigation strategies for insurers to cope with either deflation or high inflation rates. 5. The fifth section describes a publicly available model that can be used to develop inflation/deflation projections under a regime switching format that can readily be adjusted to reflect current financial uncertainty. 6. The sixth section provides conclusions.

Description: The recent financial crisis created incentives to review investment practices and see what was done well and what could be improved for the future. Looking inward at insurer investment practices, background trend information was generated and a survey developed for insurers to share their thoughts. The research continued with conversations in private and public forums, where initial conclusions were expanded.

Description: This report helps to identify key socioeconomic trends influencing the need and demand for the industry's products and services, and how these trends will influence marketing methods.

Description: This paper represents a brief progress report on research, being sponsored by the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries, in the area of modeling of economic series. In particular, research is being undertaken to provide a foundation for the actuarial community’s modeling of a variety of economic variables, including interest rates, equity returns, inflation, unemployment rates, and real estate price levels. The specific objectives of this research are to provide a summary of the literature in the area of economic scenario modeling, identify data sources and methodologies in this area useful to the actuarial profession, and produce working software for economic modeling, including appropriate documentation, to be made available to the general actuarial community in order to allow actuaries to use and build upon this research. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2004, Vol. 1.

Description: This paper analyzes the U. S. Treasury monthly interest rates from 1953 to 1992, and the daily rates from 1981 to 1992 for various forms of chaotic behavior. The primary analysis was in determining the Burst Exponent by the use of Rescaled Range Analysis. This paper also discusses other possible uses of Fractional Brownian Motion in Finance Theory, Macroeconomics, and Actuarial Science. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994 VOL. 1.

Description: This paper discusses contracts sold by states which promised to provide tuition in the future for a fixed price. Because these contracts provide a benefit whose dollar value is uncertain at the time of sale, these contracts contain significant risks to the states and create a challenge to the actuaries who opine on the adequacy of the trust funds to provide the benefits promised by these contracts. This article discusses some of the implications of the method used by the major states to project tuition inflation and explores other possible methods. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 3.

Description: This paper defines a concept of equivalence for profit standards. The central principle advanced is that the company should set prices on all its products to produce marginal profits that are equal in proportion to the products' marginal use of surplus. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1981, Vol. 33.