We construct the contingent claims models that price participating policies with rate guarantees, bonuses and default risk. These policies are characterized by the sharing of profits from an investment portfolio between the insurer and the policy holders. A certain surplus distribution mechanism (reversionary bonus) is employed to credit interest at or above certain specified guaranteed rate pe...

Reserving in general insurance is often done using chain-laddertype methods. We propose a method aimed at situations where there is a sudden change in the economic environment affecting the policies for all accident years in the reserving triangle. It is shown that methods for forecasting non-stationary time series are helpful. We illustrate the method using data published in Barnett and Zehnwi...

Disarmament has had its ups and downs, to say the least. If Dr. Johnson were with us tonight, he might quip that its persistence marks a triumph of hope over experience. Progress in this field is often slow and incremental. Sometimes it is ambiguous or subject to conflicting interpretations. Sometimes it is hard to assign credit to individuals or specific policies when progress is made, or to a...

The financial crisis that surfaced in 2007 has stressed the need to identify the ultimate sources of the incentives that were behind the preceding credit and housing bubbles. To lower the likelihood of future financial collapses, prudent economic policies as well as an adequate regulatory and supervisory framework for financial institutions are required. Monetary policy, in turn, should be dire...

Recent years have been characterized by an economic and financial crisis of global proportions and while the many analyses undertaken are largely able to identify its origins and causes (see, for example, Lewis, 2011), it seems much of the blame lies with the markets. Meanwhile, present austerity and credit control policies are arguably proving to be counterproductive increasing unemployment an...

Many factors innuence a learning process and the performance of a learned classiier. In this paper we investigate the eeects of class distribution in the training set on performance. We also study diierent methods of measuring performance based on cost models and the performance eeects of training class distribution with respect to the diierent cost models. Observations from these eeects help u...

Many factors innuence a learning process and the performance of a learned classiier. In this paper we investigate the performance eeects of class distribution in the training set. We also study diierent methods of measuring performance based on cost models and the performance eeects of training class distribution with respect to the diierent cost models. Observations from these eeects help us d...

In keeping with the growing movement in scientific publishing toward transparency in data and methods, we propose changes to journal authorship policies and procedures to provide insight into which author is responsible for which contributions, better assurance that the list is complete, and clearly articulated standards to justify earning authorship credit. To accomplish these goals, we recomm...

In this paper we propose an accountability management framework for resource sharing in peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed computing systems. On the basis of a generalized e-coin paradigm, we developed the management framework based on the distribution of resource credit/policy, exchange of service and service evidences, and accountability management. A tree topology is assumed for the distribution...

This paper examines the relationship between child labor and access to credit at a crosscountry level. Even though this link is theoretically central to child labor, so far there has been little work done to assess its importance empirically. We measure child labor as a country aggregate, and credit constraints are proxied by the extent of financial development. These two variables display a st...