Description: American actuaries are increasingly involved in risk management. This paper presents an Overview of the role of the American actuary in risk management today, a book review of a remarkable new work by a philosopher of science, and a challenge to the reader.

Description: Non-consequentiality is quite consequential for the claims made for the applicability of Risk Theory RT to decision problems that are not transparently tactical or wholly instrumental. On the negative side, RT is not normative or even a complete heuristic in such contexts. The author takes strong exception to the common tendencies, A to link risk theory with welfarism and versions of utilitarianism, and B to claim that with or without but especially with such linkage RT is normative in both moral and rational analysis, choice and action.

Description: A European call option pricing model similar to the Black-Scholes equation [1] is derived. Like the Black-Scholes equation, the model is based upon an assumption of a lognormal distribution of the price of a risky, non-dividend-paying security at a given point in the future. However, unlike Black-Scholes, the market's risk preference is recognized through a parameter that permits refinement of the model to agree either with experience or with future advances in the underlying theory.

Description: Demography is a very exciting subject. With a simple mathematical model, students can project a country's population forward 25, 59, 75 even 100 years. This paper will focus on six ideas from demography. They all can be useful to an actuary, yet none of them would be considered at any length if the actuary didn’t study demography.

Description: The conventional way to analyze grouped observations on a single variable is to construct histograms or, sometimes, fit a normal distribution. We extend this latter approach by allowing for transformations to near normality.

Description: In this paper, we study a survival regression model known as Cox's proportional Hazards model. We assume that the data available are already grouped and develop a minimum distance estimation procedure that is also applicable when the data are also left or right censored. Asymptotic properties of the estimators are established and the numerical implementation of the method based on an iterated reweighted least squares algorithm is discussed.

Description: Statistical properties of interest, annuity and insurance functions are examined when mortality and interest are treated as having a random component. Several special models of interest rate fluctuation are examined in detail. It is hoped that such theory will be useful in developing fluctuation reserves and premium margins. Presented at the 13th Annual Actuarial Research Conference, Ball State University, August 31st. September lst, 2nd. 1978.

Description: This is authors' Fellowship Credit Research Paper. This paper will develop a model for cash flow testing traditional participating insurance that utilizes pricing tools and assumptions to project reserve liabilities. The model makes use of finance and accounting tools to monitor the reasonableness of ending and intermediate surplus results that emerge under the various interest rate scenarios imposed.

Description: This paper shows how discrete multivariate analysis or multidimensional contingency table methods may be applied to data arising in actuarial work. A brief introduction to the theory is followed by two detailed examples of its application. Finally, the concluding remarks indicate how the procedure could be incorporated into a complete rate-making procedure. This work was performed for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Description: In this expository paper several comments are made with respect to the statistical independence of the curtate future lifetime and the fractional part of the future lifetime, both of a general status. In particular, the conditions for independence need to be stated carefully. The last-survivor status is cited as an example. More general assumptions than the uniform distribution of deaths assumption are then considered, together with applications to insurances, annuities, and reserves. Similar results to those under the uniform distribution of deaths assumption are obtained. Brief comments are made with respect to contingent probabilities in multiple lives and multiple decrement theory.