Forecasting Product Liability Claims

The Johns-Manville asbestos litigation took 12 years to reach settlement and is expected to generate nearly 500,000 claims at a value of over $34 billion. This book describes the taks of forecasting the number, timing, and nature os claims from a set of exposed persons of unknown size. The models will be of use in other product liability cases such as those involving tobacco and breast implants. The volume is written for a broad audience of actuaries, biostatisticans, health scientists, financial analysts, and statisticians.

Kenneth G. Manton, Ph.D. is Research Professor, Research Director, and Director of the Center for Demographic Studies at Duke University, and Medical Research Professor at Duke University Medical Centers Department of Community and Family Medicine. Dr. Manton is also a Senior Fellow of the Duke University Medical Centers Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. His research interests include mathematical models of human aging, mortality, and chronic disease. He was the 1990 recipient of the Mindel C. Sheps Award in Mathematical Demography presented by the Population Association of America; and in 1991 he received the Allied-Signal Inc. Achievement Award in Aging administered by the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging. Joel E. Cohen, Ph.D., Dr. P.H., is Professor of Population, and Head of the Laboratory of Populations, Rockefeller University. He also is Professor of Populations at Columbia University. His research interests include the demography, ecology, epidemiology, and social organization of human and non-human populations, and related mathematical concepts. In 1981, he was elected Fellow of the MacArthur and Guggeneheim Foundations. He was the 1992 recipient of the Mindel C. Sheps Award in Mathematical Demography presented by the Population Association of America; and in 1994, he received the Distinguished Statistical Ecologist Award at the Sixth International Congress of Ecology.