New better than used in expectation 2026-10-14
A nonnegative lifetime or claim law is new better than used in expectation if its mean residual life at every age with positive survival is at most its original mean. The displayed equivalent inequality says that its equilibrium claim-size distribution is no larger in stochastic order than the original law. For an Erlang distribution of shape two and rate one, the two survival functions are and , so the condition holds.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 43 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
In the classical risk model, write the surplus aswhere is the claim-arrival Poisson process. The ruin time is . The ultimate ruin probability isThe positive root in the question is the adjustment coefficient. The Lundberg inequality and the Cramér–Lundberg approximation are, respectively,The interior adjustment coefficient ruin prefactor is finite here because lies strictly inside the finite domain of the moment-generating function; the claim-size density supplies the nonarithmetic condition for the asymptotic. Strict convexity makes its denominator positive. The approximation is an asymptotic statement, while the inequality is a bound at every nonnegative initial capital.
The inequality can also be seen directly from the exponential surplus martingale . Its expectation factor per unit time is zero in the exponent because . Apply the optional stopping theorem at , a bounded time. On , , so . Increasing proves the bound without stopping at an unbounded time.
For any nonnegative claim size, the Tonelli theorem applied to gives the exponential tail identityCombining it with the adjustment equation yieldsThe density integrates to one by the tail integral formula for moments. Thus has the equilibrium claim-size distribution, and the preceding formula says .
Under the given NBUE condition, the stochastic order comparison is at every . Apply the same exponential tail identity to both variables to obtainConsequentlyand rearrangement proves the adjustment-coefficient lower bound for NBUE claims:This uses the specified distributional comparison, not an unwarranted assumption that an arbitrary equilibrium claim law is always smaller than its original law.
For the final example, is the shape-two, rate-one gamma distribution, with , survival function , and moment-generating function for . With , the positive adjustment root satisfiesDividing out the zero root and simplifying gives . Only the smaller root is in the finite-transform interval , soThe equilibrium density and survival function areThus for every , proving that this claim law is new better than used in expectation. Finally the lower bound equals . Our exact root is larger because , equivalently . Henceverifying the requested bound for the example.