The Geneva Association and Risk Economics The Geneva Association The Geneva Association (International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics) commenced its activities in June 1973, on the initiative of twenty-two members in eight European countries. It now has fifty-four members in sixteen countries in Europe and in the United States. The members of the association are insurance companies which provide financial support for its activities. The aims and strategy of the Geneva Association were clearly defined in 1971 by the founding committee. They were set forth in the first report to the Assembly of Members in 1974: "To make an original contribution to the progress of insurance by objective studies on the interdependence between economics and insurance." In pursuit of this objective, the Association strives to place insurance problems in the context of the modern economy and to overcome the antagonism between different groups and institutions by showing that they all have a common interest in tackling the problem of risk in a changing world. In consequence, the studies made by the Association had to move away from the subjects familiar to insurance professionals and explore related fields, dealing with opinions and behavior falling outside the profession's vii FOREWORD viii traditional framework of analysis. It is in this direction that the Association's preoccupations have been directed from the beginning, towards areas in which insurance activities come into contact with those of other economic sectors such as government, banking, manufacturing, and households.

Property-liability insurance rates for most lines of business are regulated in about one-half of the states. In most cases, this me ans that rates must be filed with the state insurance commissioner and approved prior to use. The remainder of the states have various forms of competitive rating laws. These either require that rates be filed prior to use but need not be approved or that rates need not be filed at all. State rating laws are summarized in Rand Corporation (1985). The predominant form of insurance rate regulation, prior approval, began in the late 1940s following the V. S. Supreme Court decision in United States vs. South-Eastern Underwriters Association, 322 V. S. 533 (1944). This was an anti trust case involving one of four regional associa tions of insurance companies, which constituted an insurance cartel. The case struck down an earlier decision, Paul vs. Virginia, 8 Wall 168 (1869), holding that the business of insurance was not interstate commerce and hence that state regulation of insurance did not violate the commerce clause of the V. S. Constitution. Following South-Eastern Underwriters, the Vnited States Congress passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which held that continued state regulation and taxation of insurance was in the public interest. The act also held that the federal antitrust laws would not apply to insurance to the extent that the business was adequately regulated by state law. (See V. S. Department of Justice 1977.

th This book is published to commemorate the 50 Anniversary of the S.S. Huebner Foundation for Insurance Education. Administered at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Huebner Foundation was established in 1941 to strengthen insurance education at the collegiate level by increasing the number of professors specializing in insurance and enriching the literature in the field. The financial support of leading life insurance companies has enabled the Foundation to provide post-graduate education for prospective insurance teachers and scholars. Through its fellowship program, the Foundation supports students in the Ph.D. program in Risk and Insurance at the Wharton School. The success of the Foundation is measured by the accomplishments of its alumni. Former Huebner Fellows play leading roles in every major area of insurance education. Fellows teach insurance to tens of thousands of undergraduate and MBA students each year and have written hundreds of books and thousands of articles on insurance. Fellows hold leadership positions at the American College, the Life Office Management Association, and the Certified Employee Benefit Specialist Program. The Foundation was created in honor of Dr. Solomon S. Huebner, a pioneer in insurance education. Dr. Huebner taught the first organized course on the economics of insurance ever offered at the collegiate level in 1904. An internationally recognized author and teacher, Dr. Huebner had a profound impact on both insurance education and the insurance industry. He served on the faculty of the Wharton School for more than nearly fifty years.

The First International Conference on Insurance Solvency was held at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania from June 18th through June 20th, 1986. The conference was the inaugural event for Wharton's Center for Research on Risk and Insurance. In atten dance were thirty-nine representatives from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The papers presented at the Conference are published in two volumes, this book and a companion volume, Classical Insurance Solvency Theory, J. D. Cummins and R. A. Derrig, eds. (Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988). The first volume presented two papers reflecting important advances in actuarial solvency theory. The current volume goes beyond the actuarial approach to encom pass papers applying the insights and techniques of financial economics. The papers fall into two groups. The first group con sists of papers that adopt an essentially actuarial or statistical ap proach to solvency modelling. These papers represent methodology advances over prior efforts at operational modelling of insurance companies. The emphasis is on cash flow analysis and many of the models incorporate investment income, inflation, taxation, and other economic variables. The papers in second group bring financial economics to bear on various aspects of solvency analysis. These papers discuss insurance applications of asset pricing models, capital structure theory, and the economic theory of agency.

The debate between the proponents of "classical" and "Bayesian" statistica} methods continues unabated. It is not the purpose of the text to resolve those issues but rather to demonstrate that within the realm of actuarial science there are a number of problems that are particularly suited for Bayesian analysis. This has been apparent to actuaries for a long time, but the lack of adequate computing power and appropriate algorithms had led to the use of various approximations. The two greatest advantages to the actuary of the Bayesian approach are that the method is independent of the model and that interval estimates are as easy to obtain as point estimates. The former attribute means that once one learns how to analyze one problem, the solution to similar, but more complex, problems will be no more difficult. The second one takes on added significance as the actuary of today is expected to provide evidence concerning the quality of any estimates. While the examples are all actuarial in nature, the methods discussed are applicable to any structured estimation problem. In particular, statisticians will recognize that the basic credibility problem has the same setting as the random effects model from analysis of variance.

Until a few years ago I concentrated my attention on workers' compensa tion programs in the United States and Canada. Because the United States has 52 programs and Canada has eight, I was exposed to a diversity of approaches that caused me to believe that few other approaches existed. Since 1984 I have become more aware of what the rest of the world has been doing and discovered that my knowledge needed to be broadened significantly. The trigger action was a 1984 faculty research exchange agreement between Keio University in Tokyo and the University of Minnesota that made it possible for me to spend much of my time studying Japan's workers' compensation program and comparing it with the United States approaches. Japan's program had several features that I had not encountered in the United States or Canada. After this experience I attached considerably more value to and spent more time studying the Social Security Administration's biennial reports on Social Security Pro grams Throughout The World, which include workers' compensation programs. I also presented papers at two meetings of the International Insurance Society based on my Japanese and Social Security Adminis tration report research. Many participants urged further study in this area and offered to send me materials describing their nations' programs. The result is this study which I hope that readers will find interesting and worthwhile.

Workers' compensation insurance presents a set of institutional charac teristics that are unique. For every other form of insurance, both the insurer and the coverage provided under the policy are completely controlled either by the federal or a state government, or by an arrangement between the insured and a property-casualty insurer. Unemployment insurance, Social Security, and bank-deposit insurance are examples for which a legis lative body sets the benefits. and a government agency prescribes the in surance premium. By contrast, the coverage and premiums for automobile, homeowners, and fire insurance are individual contractual arrangements between a policyholder and one of the more than 1800 U. S. property casualty insurance companies. Workers' compensation insurance, however, is a hybrid in which state legislatures stipulate the terms of coverage, while regulated competition is the major determinant of prices. State legislatures enact statutes that prescribe the replacement rate and duration of indemnity benefits, as well as full reimbursement of medical expenses. And although the manual rates for workers' compensation insurance continue to be administered by a prior approval process in most states, the competitive-market price for coverage is achieved through a variety of price-modification plans (Appel and Borba, 1988).

This book is about the process of using analytics and the capabilities of analytics in today’s organizations. Cutting through the buzz surrounding the term analytics and the overloaded expectations about using analytics, the book demystifies analytics with an in-depth examination of concepts grounded in operations research and management science. Analytics as a set of tools and processes is only as effective as: The data with which it is working The human judgment applying the processes and understanding the output of these processes. For this reason, the book focuses on the analytics process. What is intrinsic to analytics’ real organizational impact are the careful application of tools and the thoughtful application of their outcomes. This work emphasizes analytics as part of a process that supports decision-making within organizations. It wants to debunk overblown expectations that somehow analytics outputs or analytics as applied to other concepts, such as Big Data, are the be-all and end-all of the analytics process. They are, instead, only a step within a holistic and critical approach to management thinking that can create real value for an organization. To develop this holistic approach, the book is divided into two sections that examine concepts and applications. The first section makes the case for executive management taking a holistic approach to analytics. It draws on rich research in operations and management science that form the context in which analytics tools are to be applied. There is a strong emphasis on knowledge management concepts and techniques, as well as risk management concepts and techniques. The second section focuses on both the use of the analytics process and organizational issues that are required to make the analytics process relevant and impactful.