Description: Abstract for the paper which gives a unified approach to modern credibility models by using the theory of estimating functions.

Description: Abstracts of various papers published in ARCH 1983 Vol. 1

Description: The zeta distribution with regression parameters has been rarely used in statistics because of the difficulty of estimating the parameters by traditional maximum likelihood. This is the abstract of a paper that proposes an alternative method for estimating the parameters based on an iteratively reweighted least-squares algorithm.

Description: Mortality rates for a local community are desired in conjunction with the calculation of health-adjusted life expectancy HALE, an indicator of population health.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper that derives expressions for the moments of the distribution of the option payoff in a Black Scholes economy. These results are of interest from a purely statistical viewpoint. They may also be of interest given the current importance of value at risk calculations. The paper also derives formulae for the moments of barrier options and provides numerical examples.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper that considers a general two-country model of exchange rate dynamics in which interest rates are stochastic. Special cases of this model are also illustrated in which the, interest rates are constant in each country and when interest rates are Gaussian in each country. This model provides an important tool for actuaries dealing with global risk which includes valuation of currency derivatives [forwards, futures, options and swaps], frequency/severity claims model with exchange rate risk in the claim size, valuation of individual insurance contracts written in foreign currency, and valuation of general interest sensitive claims in foreign currency.

Description: This abstract introduces the paper which uses credibility theory to analyze policyholder persistency. It is assumed that persistency depends on the difference between the premium charge and anticipated claims.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper that presents a model for examining the effect of various relationships between mortality rates and lapse rates on the mortality experience of a cohort of insured lives. It takes an individual approach rather than the aggregate approach used in traditional methods of analyzing selective lapsation. The model assumes that insured lives are healthy at policy issue, but may later move to an impaired state from which the lapse rate is zero. Associated with each insured is an unobservable 'risk level' random variable, which reflects the heterogeneity of the insured group. Individual mortality and lapse rates are functions of the risk level. A numerical illustration provides some interesting results obtained using this model.

Description: This is an abstract of a 1998 presentation from the 33rd Annual Actuarial Research Conference that introduces a family of fractional age assumptions and discusses its usefulness in estimating mortality rates and calculating actuarial present values. Members of the family include the familiar uniform distribution of deaths, constant force, and Balducci assumptions.