Statistical concepts of a priori and a posteriori risk classification in insurance

Everyday we face all kinds of risks, and insurance is in the business of providing us a means to transfer or share these risks, usually to eliminate or reduce the resulting financial burden, in exchange for a predetermined price or tariff. Actuaries are considered professional experts in the economic assessment of uncertain events, and equipped with many statistical tools for analytics, they help formulate a fair and reasonable tariff associated with these risks. An important part of the process of establishing fair insurance tariffs is risk classification, which involves the grouping of risks into various classes that share a homogeneous set of characteristics allowing the actuary to reasonably price discriminate. This article is a survey paper on the statistical tools for risk classification used in insurance. Because of recent availability of more complex data in the industry together with the technology to analyze these data, we additionally discuss modern techniques that have recently emerged in the statistics discipline and can be used for risk classification. While several of the illustrations discussed in the paper focus on general, or non-life, insurance, several of the principles we examine can be similarly applied to life insurance. Furthermore, we also distinguish between a priori and a posteriori ratemaking. The former is a process which forms the basis for ratemaking when a policyholder is new and insufficient information may be available. The latter process uses additional historical information about policyholder claims when this becomes available. In effect, the resulting a posteriori premium allows one to correct and adjust the previous a priori premium making the price discrimination even more fair and reasonable.     

A social policy model for the reconciliation of employment and family life from a gender equality perspective

The issue of family–employment reconciliation has rapidly evolved from being ignored to a certain dejá vu perception in public debate, as a result of its media success during the last decade. This is even more the case in Spain, where it was only in the late 1990s, when a law was passed to regulate and extend parental and other leave for workers with close relatives in need of care, that reconciliation policies began to be generally discussed and considered. In a context of quick population aging as a consequence of low fertility, concern on labor force supply in the middle term is high on the agenda. Women are increasingly considered to be necessary both as workers and mothers (of future workers), thus raising awareness of the importance of social policies to make their double presence in both worlds possible. There is now general agreement from the right to the left on the urgency to develop family–employment policies. But what is not generally addressed is the impact of such policies on gender equality, a dimension which tends to be either ignored or taken for granted. Not all reconciliation measures have the same effects on the women and men relationship. Some of them push forward equality, whereas others go backwards. Efficiency in making job and family responsibilities compatible does not always go hand in hand with increasing equality. The paper presents a theoretical model for the reconciliation of work and family life from a gender equality perspective. The three main kinds of instruments available in social policy – services, leave, and cash – are examined in four different cases: care of under-threes, care of sick children, coordination of work and school schedules, and care of children during school holidays. Each case is looked at considering its effects on social and gender equality, as well as child welfare. The model includes as active agents of the system the State (promotes and regulates), families and individuals (those directly implicated), and the market as labor market, on the one hand, and supplier of private services, on the other.     

Speaking French in Portugal: An analysis of contested models of emigrant personhood in narratives about return migration and language use

I address how the offspring of Portuguese emigrants in France, Luso‐descendants (LDs), interpret their language practices and identities relative to models of language and personhood from their ‘sending’ society. Specifically, I examine how LDs tell each other narratives about having been identified as an emigrant in Portugal, based on French‐influenced speech. In telling each other these stories, LDs position themselves relative to two models of language and personhood. The first diasporic model interprets LDs' French as willful abandonment of an essential Portuguese identity. The second transnational model interprets LDs' French as the legitimate result of extended residence abroad. I examine how participants explicitly and/or implicitly invoke both models, through the relationship between narrating and narrated participants' language use. I conclude by asking about LDs' awareness of their simultaneous adherence to multiple models of language and identity.     

‘They More or Less Blended in with Society’: Changing Attitudes to European Migrant Workers in Post-war Lancashire

European volunteer workers have received comparatively little attention in the history of British post-war immigration, with greater coverage given to, for example, demobilised members of the Polish Resettlement Corps. This paper is based upon oral history interviews with a group of European immigrants, predominantly European volunteer workers, and local Lancastrians who started work in the Lancashire cotton industry between 1946 and 1951, and examines perceptions of how they integrated into British life in a variety of domains. The paper emphasises that ‘blending-in’ was context-dependent, with a sense of being welcomed and fitting-in applying to certain domains and in certain situations but not necessarily in others. It argues that migration fosters particular cultural attitudes and practices amongst both migrants and hosts as social identities are produced and reproduced, changed and challenged.     

Engaged with eBay

eBay promises individuals varied identity positions but renders the most traditional roles—particularly wedding engagements and marriages between a woman and a man. The company indicates that “you can get it on eBay” and the site satisfies desires, fulfills consumer needs, and connects people. Yet, eBay also controls the messy and queer aspects of collecting, and institutes a normalizing structure that compels most individuals to follow eBay's directives, attend to its moral codes, and facilitate community trust. I use close visual and textual analysis and feminist and collecting literature to interrogate how eBay deploys narratives about engagement rings, weddings, and heterosexual unions. I also consider the related ways women sellers list their personal wedding dresses. By providing representations of their weddings and marriages, these women support eBay's normalizing structure and trouble some of its functions. Studying such practices is important because wedding cultures and related rituals ordinarily articulate gender, race, and sexuality positions; conceptions of the individual, family, community, and state; connections between love and consumerism; and the standards by which people are expected to live their lives.     

Discourses of Identity at the Spanish/Portuguese Border: Self-Identification Strategies of Centre and Periphery

This article examines the self-identification strategies that officials of two border towns use to characterise their respective localities. These strategies are considered relative to four theoretical paradigms used to analyse identity: centre-periphery, regionalist, essentialist and non-essentialist. Clear differences are revealed between the two towns, despite their similar geographical location at the periphery, general demographic features and shared history. In one case, the evidence suggests that the identity is centred locally and affirmed through daily behaviour or 'practices', while in the other, that the identity focus is regional and essentialist in nature.     

Treatment Utilization Among Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Participants of Corrections-Based Substance Abuse Programs Reentering the Community

ABSTRACT

This study examines differences in drug use and recidivism outcomes at 12 months postrelease from jail or prison as a function of geographic location and treatment utilization. Participants (N= 700) were previously enrolled in drug treatment during the last 6 to 9 months of their incarceration and were released to the community on either parole or serve-out. Findings from this study indicated that offenders returning to metropolitan areas reported more use of community treatment services following release than offenders in nonmetropolitan areas. Although offenders in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas who reported community treatment following release were less likely to be reincarcerated, community treatment utilization was not a significant correlate of relapse. Findings are discussed, and future directions include favorable outcomes when community treatment is utilized.     

Long-term Growth Perspectives and Economic Convergence of CEE and SEE Countries

The paper first investigates the main drivers of economic growth and real convergence in CEE and SEE Countries. In the theoretical framework provided by the growth-accounting approach, both are shown to be driven by capital accumulation and total factor productivity changes, with the latter making however a major contribution. The nominal convergence path towards the Eurozone is then analysed. Despite considerable results obtained in the last decade, most EU new members are still found to face severe challenges in the process of converging towards Maastricht criteria. The need to reconcile exchange rate stability with inflation convergence is in particular seen to be at the heart of their de facto decision to delay the EMU entry date until a higher degree of real convergence will have been achieved.

Extreme ranking analysis in robust ordinal regression

We extend the principle of robust ordinal regression with an analysis of extreme ranking results. In our proposal, we consider the whole set of instances of a preference model that is compatible with preference information provided by the DM. We refer to both, the well-known UTA^GMS method, which builds the set of general additive value functions compatible with DM's preferences, and newly introduced in this paper PROMETHEE^GKS, which constructs the set of compatible outranking models via robust ordinal regression. Then, we consider all complete rankings that follow the use of the compatible preference models, and we determine the best and the worst attained ranks for each alternative. In this way, we are able to assess its position in an overall ranking, and not only in terms of pairwise comparisons, as it is the case in original robust ordinal regression methods. Additionally, we analyze the ranges of possible comprehensive scores (values or net outranking flows). We also discuss extensions of the presented approach on other multiple criteria problems than ranking. Finally, we show how the presented methodology can be applied in practical decision support, reporting results of three illustrative studies.