Description: This session from the 1995 SOA Boston Meeting presents a political version of risk assessment and risk analysis. The presenter looks at the politics and the political economy in place, some of the trends, parallels and potential problems. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 4a.

Description: This 1997 presentation from the 32nd Actuarial Research Conference develops a stochastic generator for the generation of scenarios of the S&P 500 index, dividend yield, consumer price index, and U.S. Treasury yields. The authors first create a set of 'stylized facts' for these series. They estimate statistical models for these series. These in-sample statistical models are themselves not suitable for generation of scenarios for decision making, but instead are additional 'stylized facts' that assist in model development. The 'best' statistical model according to standard statistical model selection criteria can easily lead to a model that is highly unsuitable for generation of scenarios for decision making. The authors develop a stochastic generator that is suitable for decision making under uncertainty.

Description: The importance of financial wellness has been increasingly recognized in the last few years. More organizations are sponsoring programs to assist people in different stages of their life.

Description: Investment risk management has become a core competency of insurance companies, and much has been discussed on this topic. This session examines the current investment risk management practices such as product line specific hedging and macro hedging, with a focus on what still remains to be addressed—whether the tradeoff of addition risk management is worthwhile.

Description: This session discussion is about the government fiscal policies and the budget deficit. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 2.

Description: Diabetes mellitus type 2 is an excellent model for assessing the setup of medical coverage in the U.S. health care system. It is a chronic disease that has genetic, behavioral and other medical causes, and causes many complications over the long term. From Financing Chronic Care Monograph, M-HB05-1.

Description: The essay discusses the appropriate role of insurance companies, efficient and economical ways to care for chronic illnesses and having a maximum price society will pay to support the ongoing life of any one individual.

Description: Accurate determination of the appropriate time to retire and replace a physical asset is important for large ensembles of such assets when taken as a whole, and concerns the fate of tens of trillions of dollars in assets, such as airplane engines, vehicles, or any other kind of physical asset susceptible to obsolescence. A decision model to accomplish this is derived using the concept of actuarial present value applied to an economic theory of cost minimization. Since this is a theory coupling investor wealth creation with the long-term optimization of the use of scarce resources, it can also be offered as an economic model relevant to sustainability.

Description: Evidence is building from the physical sciences that we are starting to reach some of earth’s limits. Unless we can find some technological solutions, once these limits are reached, we can expect to see a very changed world. Instead of having constantly increasing resources available to us, we can expect ever-decreasing resources to be available. Instead of seeing year after year of growth, increasing longevity and improving morbidity, we can expect the opposite.

Description: 1994 SOA Meeting, San Francisco. In this session Dr. William Freund, chief economist emeritus of the New York Stock Exchange and former chief economist at the Prudential, shared his perspective on the economic outlook.