Description: 1994 SOA Spring Meeting, Orlando. In this session the panelists debated the diversity of professional practice about how companies and regulators can and should measure profit and set standards for profit margins. One panelist spoke of the traditional actuarial perspective, while the other represented the modern theory of finance.

Description: In May, 2001, the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) jointly issued a request for proposals on the research topic “Modeling of Economic Series Coordinated with Interest Rate Scenarios.” The objectives of this request were to develop a research relationship with selected persons to investigate this topic; produce a literature review of work previously done in the area of economic scenario modeling; determine appropriate data sources and methodologies to enhance economic modeling efforts relevant to the actuarial profession; and produce a working model of economic series, coordinated with interest rates, that could be made public and used by actuaries via the CAS / SOA websites to project future economic scenarios. Categories of economic series to be modeled included interest rates, equity price levels, inflation rates, unemployment rates, and real estate price levels.