Hosted by the GPH Center for Bioethics
Taming The Risk of Living Too Long: Do Tontines Point to a Solution to Longevity Risk and the "Nastiest, Hardest Problem in Finance"?
The risk of living too long to which Dr. Michael Otsuka refers is the misfortune of spending one's last years on earth in poverty, because one has outlived what has been saved up for one's retirement. One solution to this problem, once wildly popular in the U.S. but which has gained more recent notoriety as a motive for murder in film and The Simpsons, is known as a tontine, whereby the assets of those who die earlier are redistributed to those who manage to outlive them. Dr. Otsuka shows how this practice provides the theoretical basis of a more reputable solution to the aforementioned problem of longevity risk and an accompanying problem of investment risk which have famously been described by a Nobel laureate in economics as jointly giving rise to the "nastiest, hardest problem in finance".
Reception to follow the lecture.
About the Speaker:
Michael Otsuka is a Professor in the Philosophy Department and a Core Scholar in the Center for Population–Level Bioethics (CPLB) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. In 2020, he delivered the Oxford Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics on How to Pool Risks across Generations: The Case for Collective Pensions, an expanded version of which will be published as a book by Oxford University Press. This talk draws on the material for that book.
This event is free and open to all members of the NYU community. All current COVID-19 policies apply. You must have an NYU ID card and an active Violet Go pass to enter the building.