Recent research has demonstrated that mortality patterns by marital status in Japan are different from corresponding patterns in other industrialized countries. Most notably, the magnitude of the excess mortality experienced by single Japanese has been staggering. For example, estimates of life...

Modern finance has evolved the use of very complex financial instruments. Stock and interest rate options fit this description. Another example of such an instrument would be a mortgage pool involving many tranches and providing relationships between the tranches so that the payoff on one...