A maximum-entropy approach to the linear credibility formula

Amir Payandeh, Hamid Hatami and Maryam Omidi Najafabadi

Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, 2012, vol. 51, issue 1, 216-221

Abstract: Payandeh [Payandeh Najafabadi, A.T., 2010. A new approach to credibility formula. Insurance: Mathematics and Economy 46, 334–338] introduced a new technique to approximate a Bayes’ estimator with the exact credibility’s form. This article employs a well known and powerful maximum-entropy method (MEM) to extend results of Payandeh Najafabadi (2010) to a class of linear credibility, whenever claim sizes have been distributed according to the logconcave distributions. Namely, (i) it employs the maximum-entropy method to approximate an appropriate Bayes’ estimator (with respect to either the square-error or the Linex loss functions and general increasing and bounded prior distribution) by a linear combination of claim sizes; (ii) it establishes that such an approximation coincides with the exact credibility formula whenever the require conditions for the exact credibility (see below) are held. Some properties of such an approximation are discussed. Application to crop insurance has been given.

Keywords: Linear credibility formula; Bayes’ estimator; Mean square-error technique; Maximum-entropy technique; Panel data; Time series data; Crop insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C11 C16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167668711000916
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:insuma:v:51:y:2012:i:1:p:216-221

DOI: 10.1016/j.insmatheco.2011.08.010

Access Statistics for this article

Insurance: Mathematics and Economics is currently edited by R. Kaas, Hansjoerg Albrecher, M. J. Goovaerts and E. S. W. Shiu

More articles in Insurance: Mathematics and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().