Description: This article draws attention to the competition for the Boleslaw Monic Prize. Prizes totalling Dutch florins 12,500, roughly US$4,500 are being offered for the three best papers submitted on: “The significance of inflation for the non-life insurance industry, with particular reference to the relationship between direct insurance and reinsurance the problems facing management and a suggested methodology for their solution.”

Description: In 1971, a group of New York actuaries met informally with socio-economist, Edith Lynton, and heard some grim forebodings about how the larger economic problems affect the insurance industry.

Description: The following topics were discussed at concurrent sessions: 1. Personal Security in the 1970's- United States and Canada, 2. Adjusted earnings for life companies, 3. Pension funding, 4. What about these younger actuaries?, 5. Sources of statistical information for actuaries, 6. Variable life insurance, 7. Models and decision techniques, and 8. Role of the actuary in expense control. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1970, Vol 22, Pt. 2, No. 63.

Description: This panel discussion from the 1980 SOA Fall Meeting is on coping with the Council on Wage and Price Stability - COWPS - including the history of the price standard, the practical impacts of the standards and how the standard lines up with the experience. From Record of Society of Actuaries 1980, Vol. 6, No. 4.

Description: Great damage is being done to the U.S. economy as a result of the widespread misunderstanding that the Consumer Price Index measures changes in the cost of living.

Description: Acquisitions and divestitures present unique challenges to actuaries, both before and after the sale. The panelists at this presentation address the following issues for pension as well as for health and welfare plans: 1. What considerations are there when a company is being bought or sold? 2. Can the buyer and the seller ever agree upon the retiree medical liability? 3. Is the buyer interested in the income statement or the balance sheet? 4. What are some of the hidden liabilities? 5. What regulatory issues need to be considered? From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 17, No. 3B.

Description: This essay explores the role that the emerging defined contribution retirement system may be playing in the growth of wealth inequality in the United States. The current system leaves many Americans with little or no retirement savings. Those with higher accumulation levels appear to invest proportionally more in equities, which may have an exponential effect of balances over long time periods. The author hypothesizes that willingness to take investment risk involves the relationship between the amount an investor has accumulated and what she/he needs in order to cover basic costs of living. This is one reason that investors with greater accumulation levels may be able to earn higher rates of return. The essay concludes by suggesting that the U.S. defined contribution system should include all workers and provide additional fiduciary guidance. Examples reforms, both in the U.S. and other countries, are provided.

Description: This article addresses the difficulties of risk modeling in a poor economic environment. The problems include imperfect vendors of data, facing events that have never occurred before, unpredictable consumer behavior, conflicting data sources, and AAA credit doesn't always mean AAA.

Description: This article discusses how publicly traded companies fail to realize their full potential due to a lack of clarity in identifying which shareholders they are trying to serve, especially when viewing short term versus long term goals.

Description: Presenter discusses some techniques for minimizing and controlling the damage to defined-benefit pension surpluses caused by market forces. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.