Purpose – In this two-part series, the editorial aims to consider the role of the “scientific method” in human understanding, questioning both its consistency in actual practice and its reasonableness as a philosophy of action. Design/methodology/approach – In Part 1, the editorial...

Purpose – This editorial aims to consider certain aspects of the parallel development of statistics and actuarial science that are instructive in understanding the value of intellectual cross-fertilization in research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper addresses the fundamental problem...

Purpose – The purpose of the paper, in this two-part series, is to consider certain intriguing aspects of randomness, the basic mathematical concept used to model financial risk and other unknown quantities in the physical world. Design/methodology/approach – In Part 2 of the paper, the...

Purpose – This editorial seeks to address the importance of intuition and metaphor in the construction of logical systems of thought. Design/methodology/approach – Two unconventional approaches to probability theory are considered, one based upon the non-intuitive law of the excluded middle,...

Front Cover -- The Political Economy of Chinese Finance -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Part I: An Overview and Conceptual Foundations -- Market Socialism with "Chinese Characteristics" -- Introduction -- Timeline of China's Economic Reform -- Confucianism, Socialism,...

There is a natural tradeoff between the benefits of increasing the number of competitors in an insurance market and the drawback to the weakening of the law of large numbers due to the diminishing of average reserves. In this investigation we consider the possibility for optimal layers of...

The Chinese life-insurance industry has experienced major structural changes in recent years, primarily because of increasing demand and the entry of foreign insurers. Although the market is clearly booming, the efficiency of its growth and development is unclear. In this paper, we evaluate the...

Using data from China's individual health-insurance market, we study the problem of information asymmetry. Our preliminary results appear to contradict standard-model predictions, showing that higher-risk buyers are more likely to purchase "additional" insurance than lower-risk buyers, but that...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (2007) indicates that unanticipated catastrophic events could increase with time because of global warming. Therefore, it seems inadequate to assume that arrival process of catastrophic events follows a pure Poisson process...