About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherCambridge University Press

ISBN-101107111765

ISBN-139781107111769

eBay Product ID (ePID)234250729

Product Key Features

Number of Pages270 Pages

Publication NameLeases for Lives : Life Contingent Contracts and the Emergence of Actuarial Science in Eighteenth-Century England

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2017

SubjectStatistics, Contracts

TypeTextbook

AuthorDavid R. Bellhouse

Subject AreaLaw, Business & Economics

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight19.1 Oz

Item Length9.3 in

Item Width6.2 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2017-024642

Reviews'This is a distinctive work of scholarship, visiting ground that has never been as thoroughly subjected to such deep and expert examination. Bellhouse is especially knowledgeable about early English probability and its milieu, and about actuarial science. There is no one comparable in this combination of skills, and he is a master of the relevant archives as well.' Stephen Stigler, University of Chicago

Dewey Edition23

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal368.320094209033

Table Of ContentPreface; 1. Introduction; 2. Mathematics and property in the seventeenth century; 3. Edmond Halley's life table; 4. Halley's impact or lack of it; 5. De Moivre and his early influence; 6. Mathematicians as consultants; 7. Mathematicians and early life insurance companies; 8. The annuity bubble of the 1760s and 70s; 9. The after shocks of the bubble on life annuities; 10. Developments in the life insurance industry in the later eighteenth century; 11. A return to roots; 12. Conclusion; Appendix I. Technical appendix; Appendix II. Life tables; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index.

SynopsisMany historians of insurance have commented on the disconnect between the rise of English life insurance companies in the early eighteenth century and the mathematics behind the sound pricing of life insurance products that was developed at about the same time. Insurance and annuity promoters typically ignored this mathematical work. Bellhouse explores this issue, and shows that the early mathematical work was not motivated by insurance but instead by the fair valuation of life contingent contracts related to property. Even the work of the mathematician James Dodson in the creation of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, offering sound actuarially based premiums, did not change the industry in any significant way. The tipping point was a crisis in 1770 in which the philosopher and mathematician Richard Price, as well as other mathematicians, showed that a dozen or more recently formed annuity societies could not meet their financial obligations and were inviable., This important work illuminates the early modern roots of two very contemporary concerns, real estate values and pension/annuity funding. It places in historical context the work of an active group of eighteenth-century mathematicians, and gives a resonant example of the vagaries of 'technology transfer' from mathematical sciences to commercial activities.

LC Classification NumberHG9060