Articles

Uninsured Motorists in New Mexico – The Insurance Research Council Study

In the second installment in a three part series, Al Berryman and Tim Query discuss analyze the methodology of the Insurance Research Council study of uninsured motorists One popular approach to estimating the size of the uninsured motorist population is by comparing the injury portion of the uninsured motorists overage with bodily injury liability coverage. Implicitly, the Insurance Research Council study calculation makes two basic assumptions: (1) the propensity to be involved in accidents is the same for insured and uninsured motorists, and (2) the percentage of accidents that involve an insured and an uninsured motorist, where the uninsured motorist is at fault, is the same as the percentage of uninsured motorists. IRC gives no empirical evidence or a priori argument to support these assumptions.
Complete Article

Madoff and the Auditors

Madoff fraud has been much in the news. On aspect of the scandal is the role that auditors played, or didn’t play in uncovering the fraud. U.S. auditors often are sued for failing to discover their client’s financial misdeeds. Such circumstances can also encourage novel applications of the law, as appears to be happening in the Madoff case.
Complete Article

Talking Points

New Mexico is in recession, having seen a decline in jobs of 1.4 percent compared to a year earlier. Now help is on the way in the form of the Obama Stimulus Bill—formally know as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). It is estimated that the act will save or create 22,000 jobs in New Mexico, that our state will receive $1.7 from the plan. In addition, tax cuts will also help New Mexico.
Complete Article