This book offers a broad and up-to-date account of the actuarial principles of pensions. Divided into three parts, it includes discussions on both social security schemes and private pension funds, and aspects of life insurance.The first part presents the general principles of pension schemes. After a general look at the pension issue and some basic elements of demography, the main methods of financing a pension plan, for example pay-as-you-go or funding, are described in a unified...

This book examines the major economic challenges associated with the sustainability of public pensions, specifically demographic change, labor-market relations, and risk sharing. The issue of public pensions occupies the political and economic agendas of many major governments in the world. International organizations such as the World Bank and the OECD warn that the economic changes driven by an aging society negatively affects the sustainability of pension systems. This book analyzes dif...

This book presents basic stochastic processes, stochastic calculus including Lévy processes on one hand, and Markov and Semi Markov models on the other. From the financial point of view, essential concepts such as the Black and Scholes model, VaR indicators, actuarial evaluation, market values, fair pricing play a central role and will be presented.The authors also present basic concepts so that this series is relatively self-contained for the main audience formed by actuaries and ...

Quantitative finance has become these last years a extraordinary field of research and interest as well from an academic point of view as for practical applications.At the same time, pension issue is clearly a major economical and financial topic for the next decades in the context of the well-known longevity risk. Surprisingly few books are devoted to application of modern stochastic calculus to pension analysis.The aim of this book is to fill this gap and to show how rece...

Asset Pricing Theory is an advanced textbook for doctoral students and researchers that offers a modern introduction to the theoretical and methodological foundations of competitive asset pricing. Costis Skiadas develops in depth the fundamentals of arbitrage pricing, mean-variance analysis, equilibrium pricing, and optimal consumption/portfolio choice in discrete settings, but with emphasis on geometric and martingale methods that facilitate an effortless transition to the more a...

Mandatory pensions are a worldwide phenomenon. However, with fixed contribution rates, monthly benefits, and retirement ages, pension systems are not consistent with three long-run trends: declining mortality, declining fertility, and earlier retirement. Many systems need reform. This book gives an extensive nontechnical explanation of the economics of pension design. The theoretical arguments have three elements: * Pension systems have multiple objectives--consumption smoothing, insurance...

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to actuarial mathematics, covering both deterministic and stochastic models of life contingencies, as well as more advanced topics such as risk theory, credibility theory and multi-state models.This new edition includes additional material on credibility theory, continuous time multi-state models, more complex types of contingent insurances, flexible contracts such as universal life, the risk measures VaR and TVaR.Key Features...

Written by two leading experts, this is a compact guide to the key tools and methods necessary to carry out cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The authors use modern economic tools to obtain general equilibrium cost-benefit rules that can be used to evaluate small projects, as well as large and even mega projects. Intertemporal issues like discounting, the shadow price of capital, and the treatment of risk are covered, and a state-of-the-art summary of available methods for the valuation of unpr...

Back in the early 1990s, economists and policy makers had high expectations about the prospects for domestic capital market development in emerging economies, particularly in Latin America. Unfortunately, they are now faced with disheartening results. Stock and bond markets remain illiquid and segmented. Debt is concentrated at the short end of the maturity spectrum and denominated in foreign currency, exposing countries to maturity and currency risk. Capital markets in Latin America look par...

This book can help overcome the widely observed math-phobia and math-aversion among undergraduate students in these subjects. The book can also help them understand why they have to learn different mathematical techniques, how they can be applied, and how they will equip the students in their further studies.The book provides a thorough but lucid exposition of most of the mathematical techniques applied in the fields of economics, business and finance. The book deals with topics ri...

A landmark book on quantitative methods in financial markets for graduate students and finance professionalsRecent decades have seen an extraordinary growth in the use of quantitative methods in financial markets. Finance professionals routinely use sophisticated statistical techniques in portfolio management, proprietary trading, risk management, financial consulting, and securities regulation. This graduate-level textbook is designed for PhD students, advanced MB...

A rapidly growing area of economic research investigates the top of the income distribution using data from income tax records. This volume brings together studies of top incomes for twelve countries from around the world, including China, India, Japan, Argentina and Indonesia. Together with the first volume, published in 2007, the studies cover twenty two countries. They have a long time span, the earliest data relating to 1875 (for Norway), allowing recent developments to be placed in hi...