Writing
Choose
Insurance Fundamentals (Cont’d): Reinsurance Exercise Explained
Albert Wenger – Mar 23, 2016
So in one of my earlier posts on insurance fundamentals, I included an “exercise for the reader.” The question was to figure out how much money it would cost for the hypothetical insurance scheme in the example to buy re-insurance [...] Read more
Insurance Fundamentals (Cont’d): Moral Hazard
Albert Wenger – Mar 21, 2016
In the previous post in my mini-series on insurance fundamentals I provided a numerical example that has a 1 in 100 probability of a loss of $50. I explained how the fair rate to insure this would be 50 cents, [...] Read more
Machine Creativity: Possibly Sooner than Anticipated
Albert Wenger – Mar 18, 2016
AlphaGo has won its series in the game Go against grandmaster Lee Sedol 4-1. I wrote an initial post about AlphaGo after its first victory against a lesser ranked player. Humans have very big brains compared to the neural networks [...] Read more
Insurance Fundamentals (Cont’d): Numerical Example and Reinsurance
Albert Wenger – Mar 16, 2016
In the two previous posts on insurance fundamentals, I introduced a fundamental inequality relating payouts to premiums and the concept of risk aversion. Today we will look at this through a bit of a numerical example. We will look at [...] Read more
Ziggeo Open Sources Video Player and New Javascript Framework
Albert Wenger – Mar 9, 2016
Video is everywhere these days and for good reason. Even a short video clip contains a lot more information than a still image. But playing back videos in a way that works across browsers and devices has been tricky. Just [...] Read more
Insurance Fundamentals (Cont’d): Risk Aversion aka Concavity
Albert Wenger – Mar 8, 2016
In my first post on insurance principles I introduced the inequality that has to hold for the industry as a whole and also for any one insurance company to stay solvent (yes you can collect interest on premiums, so consider [...] Read more
Understanding Insurance Fundamentals
Albert Wenger – Mar 4, 2016
Yesterday with the NYU Stern class that I am co-teaching with Arun Sunderarajan we focused on the fundamentals of different businesses. The class is about product market fit but looking for that doesn’t mean you can ignore the economics of [...] Read more
Jobbatical
Joel Monegro – Mar 2, 2016
Today we lead mostly sedentary lifestyles. Once we learned how to harvest the planet's natural resources for our survival all those thousands of years ago, we abandoned our nomadic way of life and settled down by the rivers. We learned [...] Read more
The Endangered Critical Process in the Digital Age
Albert Wenger – Mar 2, 2016
Today marks my 8-year anniversary of blogging. I have learned so much from it and want to thank everyone who has engaged in the comments over the years. I am particularly grateful for comments that are critical and for ones [...] Read more