Selecting stochastic mortality models for the Italian population

Paola Biffi () and Gian Clemente ()

Decisions in Economics and Finance, 2014, vol. 37, issue 2, 255-286

Abstract: The future revision of capital requirements and a market-consistent valuation of non-hedgeable liabilities lead to an increasing attention on forecasting longevity trends. In this field, many methodologies focus on either modeling mortality or pricing mortality-linked securities (as longevity bonds). Following Lee–Carter method (proposed in 1992), actuarial literature has provided several extensions in order to consider different trends observed in European data set (e.g., the cohort effect). The purpose of the paper is to compare the features of main mortality models proposed over the years. Model selection became indeed a primary task with the aim to identify the “best” model. What is meant by best is controversial, but good selection techniques are usually based on a good balance between goodness of fit and simplicity. In this regard, different criteria, mainly based on residual and projected rates analysis, are here used. For the sake of comparison, main forecasting methods have been applied to deaths and exposures to risk of male Italian population. Weaknesses and strengths have been emphasized, by underlying how various models provide a different goodness of fit according to different data sets. At the same time, the quality and the variability of forecasted rates have been compared by evaluating the effect on annuity values. Results confirm that some models perform better than others, but no single model can be defined as the best method. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2014

Keywords: C02 - Mathematical methods, C52 - Model evaluation, validation and selection, G22 - Insurance; Insurance companies, Projected mortality models, Poisson distribution, Age-period and cohort effect on mortality, Bayesian information criterion, Residual analysis, (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10203-012-0131-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:decfin:v:37:y:2014:i:2:p:255-286

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/10203/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10203-012-0131-9

Access Statistics for this article

Decisions in Economics and Finance is currently edited by Paolo Ghirardato

More articles in Decisions in Economics and Finance from Springer, Associazione per la Matematica
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().