Description: This paper presents multiple book reviews: Reports from Staff of U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means and U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Reports in Connection with Social Security Legislation 1975-77, 'Statement on Cost Comparisons of Individual Life Insurance Policies', by Canadian Institute of Actuaries, 'Investment Activities of Life Insurance Companies' from Huebner Foundation Lectures, 'The Life Insurance Industry's Marketing Dilemma' by Johns, 'The Future of Social Security' by Munnell, 'Social Security - Today and Tomorrow' by Ball, 'Mortality Table Construction' by Batten, 'Mortality Table Construction' by Batten, 'The Crisis in Social Security - Problems and Prospects' by Boskin, 'A History of Interest Rates' by Homer, 'Indexation of Pensions and Other Benefits' by Robert Myers, 'Life Insurance Accounting' by Strain, '1978 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund...' by US Congress. Brief summaries of additional readings are also included.

Description: This paper describes a method of comparing net costs of dissimilar life insurance contracts. The principles are consistent with those of the interest-adjusted method recommended by the Moorhead committee. The significance of the results, possible applications of the method, and some concerns and conclusions are discussed.

Description: Evaluation of the excess mortality element of the Group Conversion charge. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

Description: Addresses Scheel's proposal for splitting life insurance between its savings and death benefit elements in order to reduce total variance of the risk. This paper refutes Scheel's proposition.

Description: This paper presents a statistical methodology based upon information theory, for adjusting mortality tables to obtain exactly some known individual characteristics, while obtaining a table that is as close as possible to a standard one. Followed by a discussion paper submitted

Description: This report summarizes the results of a mortality and pricing survey. It indicates significant differences between the mortality assumptions for different product lines and even between different companies within a single product line. Widespread differences in mortality expectations between products may give individuals an advantage by acting on inefficiencies in the financial services market.

Description: This paper estimates the acquisition and maintenance costs associated with life policies as a function of the amount of insurance and number of policies of an insurer by estimating a cost function for our sample of insurers.

Description: This is an excel spreadsheet with some data pertaining to an article of the same name from the Product Development News

Description: These were discussion papers on the paper, 'The Korean War Hazard' by James T. Phillips.

Description: The attached report presents the results of a survey whose purpose was to explore life insurance company practices regarding the use of a mortality improvement assumption in the pricing of life insurance products. The survey distinguished between updating base mortality tables for historical mortality improvement versus projecting mortality improvement into the future.