Description: This report predicts farm-level crop yield distributions in the absence of farm-level yield data.

Description: It is well-known that reinsurance can be an effective risk management technique for an insurer. An appropriate use of reinsurance reduces the adverse risk exposure of an insurer and improves the overall viability of the underlying business. The use of reinsurance, on the other hand, incurs additional cost to the insurer in the form of reinsurance premium. This implies that an insurer is faced with a classic tradeoff between risk spreading and risk retaining. The thrust of my research is to propose some reinsurance designs that are optimal from the perspective of an insurer. This presentation describes an empirical approach to optimal reinsurance designs. This new method has the advantage that it does not need to make any explicit assumptions on the distribution of the underling risk. More importantly, it provides a simple and yet practical way of obtaining solution on a wide range of optimal reinsurance models.

Description: This paper investigates the optimal multi-period proportional reinsurance strategy that minimizes the ruin probability of an insurer. Some conditions under which it is optimal to have no reinsurance are derived. Based on these results, a new concept, capital threshold of proportional reinsurance, is introduced. In the case of two periods, a lower bound of the capital threshold of proportional reinsurance is provided. Some economic implications and properties of this new concept are also discussed.

Description: The theme of this paper relates to solving portfolio selection problems using linear programming. The authors extend the linear optimization framework for Conditional Value-at-Risk-based portfolio selection problems to optimization over a more general class of risk measure known as the class of Coherent Distortion Risk Measure. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2012 Vol. 1.

Description: In this paper we investigate three investment-consumption problems for a risk averse investor: i an investment only problem that involves utility from only terminal wealth, ii an investment-consumption problem that involves utility from only consumption, and iii an extended investment-consumption problem that involves utility from both consumption and terminal wealth. We model these problems under a multiperiod setup that incorporates three types of uncertainties: the economic environment uncertainty, the asset return uncertainty, and the mortality uncertainty. By using dynamic programming, analytical expressions of the optimal investment consumption strategies to these problems are derived. Some economic implications on these results are also discussed.

Description: Article from Risk Management Newsletter, July 2005, Issue 5 that highlights a new frontier for actuaries unfolding in the insurance industry called Enterprise Risk Management.

Description: This report proposes a methodology to isolate crop yield improvement due to technological change and favorable and unfavorable weather.

Description: Full version of Risk Management, July 2005, Issue No. 5.

Description: The theme of this presentation relates to solving portfolio selection problems using linear and fractional programming. Two key contributions: 1. Generalization of the CVaR linear optimization framework. 2. Equivalences among four formulations of Coherent Distortion Risk Mearures optimization problems. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 2012, Vol. 1.

Description: A detailed statistical analysis of mortality improvement for the Canadian population and for the Canadian insured lives conducted by the Institute for Quantitative Finance and Insurance.