Description: In this article, the authors describe the flaws in our current determination of the Consumer Price Index CPI and other economic indicators, and propose a series of refinements for improving the CPI calculations. The article emphasizes the importance of accuracy, given the significant influence on business and investment policies, psychological effect on the marketplace, as well as on consumer confidence, and the direct impact on Social Security increases and other benefit plans.

Description: The Committee on Economic Statistics of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries has recommended that the Institute sponsor an Economic Forecasting Board composed of actuaries and economists. Its role would be to develop formal projections of interest rates, inflation rates, productivity and wages. This article discusses the role of such a board, the purposes for the projections, and the potential roadblocks to accomplishing this.

Description: Book review : Derek Bok's The Cost of Talent: How Executives and Professionals Are Compensated and How It Affects America. 'An intriguing, very well researched and documented, yet biased, book.'

Description: At our Houston meeting PD l, Donald D. Hester, Professor of Economics at University of Wisconsin, outlined a novel investment system aimed at protecting purchasing power of the lender’s funds from inflation’s ravages. This article is summary of that presentation.

Description: Discusses the influences that foreign economies have on the U.S. economy and the risks that those influences create for the U.S. life insurance industry.

Description: This is a report about inflation and index-linked securities in the United Kingdom.

Description: Baseline illustrations for article about the Delphi project to predict economic conditions far into the future in 2024. Measures under examination are 1. Increase in CPI, 2. 10 Year T-Bill yield, 3. S&P500 rate of return and 4. Corporate Baa bond yield. See the SOA website research section for the full report on the Delphi Study of Economic Variables.

Description: Book Review of How to Cope with the Developing Financial Crisis by Ashby Bladen, McGraw Hill, New York, 1979

Description: The author of this article, The Actuary’s editor, notes that this article is a capsule of what may be called “the Angle/Bladen theme.” John C. Angle spoke at Hartford in April 1980 see the Record for that meeting, pp. 188-193. His investment colleague, Ashby Bladen, addressed our Annual Meeting in Montreal last October 1980. Their observations were about mutual life insurance in the United States. The article notes that the current economic environment, with interest rates “far outside the familiar 3% to 6% range,” is a difficult one for life insurers and their traditional products, that we are becoming less conservative when the risk of serious economic trouble is rising, and “a satisfactory future depends on restoring stability, not upon trying to learn how to cope with instability.”

Description: Our November Query asked which groups, in addition to debtors and those blessed with amply indexed incomes, seem to have profited most conspicuously from the past decade’s inflation. This article summarizes the results.