Mathematical Sciences Foundry

On Monday October 24th at 4pm in Olin 201 , Susan J. Forray, Senior Director of Pricing at Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation, will discuss actuarial career paths , examples of mathematical problems faced by actuaries, and connections between Whitman coursework and actuarial work. Susan will discuss mortgage insurance and how events in the news impact the cost (and price) of mortgage insurance every day. Lastly, Susan will cover ‘price-dependent’ risk and how actuaries address circular situations in which the cost of issuing an insurance policy depends, in part, on the price the insurer charges.   BIO: Susan is currently Senior Director of Pricing at Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation. Since joining MGIC as its first actuary two years ago, Susan has been responsible for advancing MGIC’s pricing to reflect actuarial concepts and has doubled the size of MGIC’s pricing team by adding actuarial staff.  Previously, Susan was a Principal with Milliman, one of the world’s largest a

On Monday October 17th at 4pm in Olin 201 , Professors Marian Manic and Marina Ptukhina will discuss the impact of state-funded merit aid on the retention of college graduates. We investigate the relationship between broad-based merit aid programs sponsored by U.S.  state-level governments and the retention of college graduates. The impact of these programs is still debated and research in this field is limited. Using a unique data set for the 1988-2015 period and employing a difference-in-differences approach with adjustments for endogeneity bias, we find that:  states offering merit aid have higher workforce retention rates of college graduates, the effect is strongest immediately after graduation and decreases over time, and  states with larger spending on merit aid have higher average retention rates of graduates that may be weakening faster over time compared with lower-spending states.  🙞 🙜   BIOS: Marian Manic is Associate Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Dep