Applications of methods of operations research and modern economic theory

It is rather a pity that we received only three papers especially devoted to subject 2, “applications of methods of operations research and modern economic theory†. Maybe the time for real applications of operations research techniques in the insurance field has still to come. However, I am convinced that sooner or later such techniques—in connection with the use of the computor—will play a more or less important part in the management of insurance business. An impulse to this of course will be the appearance of —let me say—“textbooks†on this subject; such as the book written by Wolff, Methoden der Unternehmensforschung im Versicherungswesen, Springerverlag 1966, a copy of which I received a few days ago.Meanwhile, the fact that only a few papers have been sent in gives me the opportunity to report on them in some detail and to make a few side remarks.The studies presented are:Borch. Dynamic decision problems in an insurance company, de Leve and Weeda. Driving with Markov-programming.d'Hooge, Franckx and Gennart. Utilisation pratique de la méthode de simulation dans l'assurance “non-life†.The paper Prof. Borch submitted, deals essentially with some problems related with random walk theory. Partly it can be considered to be the counterpart of the classical discontinuous ruin theory as its subject is the expected duration of life of the company and maximisation of the discounted value of dividend payments.The question of calculating the expected duration of life and more specially the means the company has to influence its future lifetime involves reinsurance and utility theory to which topic in recent years Prof. Borch has devoted a number of very interesting publications.