Research notes on socioeconomic siting dynamics

The inclusion of socioeconomic considerations in the process of industrial location/siting analysis has received limited attention in recent years. More commonly the social and economic impacts associated with the construction and operation of a major project emerge only after a prime site has been selected. This result serves to characteristically delimit advance socioeconomic planning and prevents a full and complete examination of relative cost-benefit alternatives. Impacted communities and the mitigation problems they pose can be insurmountable when addressed after the fact.This article will discuss a strategy for socioeconomic inputs to project siting and outline a model that has been utilized for the purpose of instigating potential socioeconomic impacts at the earliest possible stage within the industrial location siting process.     

Structured settlement annuities, part 1: overview and the underwriting process

Structured settlement underwriting is the underwriting of medically impaired lives for the purchase of an annuity to fund the settlement. Other than risk assessment, structured settlement (SS) underwriting has little in common with traditional life insurance underwriting. Most noteworthy of these differences is the relative lack of actuarial data on which to base decisions about mortality and the necessity for prospective thinking about risk assessment. The purpose of this paper is to provide a foundation for understanding the structured settlement business and to contrast the underwriting of structured settlements with that of traditional life insurance. This is the first part of a two-part article on SS annuities. Part 2 deals with the mortality experience in SS annuitants and the life-table methodology used to calculate life expectancy for annuitants at increased mortality risk.