One headlight! Bibliometric analysis and text mining of the scientific production in the Non-Life area of Actuarial SciencesAbstract
Actuarial Science, a social and interdisciplinary science, mainly studies risks. This field envisions insurance contracts as the main instruments for the financial protection of society. This article aims to analyze the recent scientific production in the Non-Life area of Actuarial Sciences, outlining both the Brazilian and the global panorama. Central topics related to (re)insurers, such as risk management and solvency models, are analyzed. Trends, such as climate change, catastrophes, telematics, and IFRS changes, are also identified. A bibliometric analysis of the literature was carried out, with an assessment of performance measures and knowledge mapping, as well as the use of text mining. Association graphs and trend graphs are also presented. 22,880 articles from the two main scientific databases (Scopus and Web of Science), from between 2007-2022, were used. The results reveal changes in actuarial studies, indicating new approaches even in its core themes. Interdisciplinary research stands out, integrating applied sciences. The epicenter of actuarial research has shifted from North America to Asian countries, especially China. Finally, collaborations are crucial for productivity and impactful scientific contributions, regardless of the field or topic.
Keywords:
Insurance; Actuarial Science; Bibliometrics; Scientometrics; Text Mining
Resumo
A Atuária, ciência social e interdisciplinar, foca no estudo dos riscos, tendo os contratos de seguro como principais instrumentos de proteção financeira da sociedade. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a produção científica recente em Ciências Atuariais do ramo Não-Vida, delineando o panorama no Brasil e globalmente. Temas centrais ligados a (res)seguradoras, como gerenciamento de riscos e modelos de solvência, são analisados. Tendências, como alterações climáticas, catástrofes, telemática e IFRS, também são identificadas. Realizou-se uma análise bibliométrica da literatura, com avaliação de medidas de desempenho e mapeamento do conhecimento, e mineração textual, com grafos de associações e tendências, usando 22.880 artigos dos dois principais bancos de dados científicos (Scopus e Web of Science) entre 2007-2022. Os resultados revelam mudanças nos temas atuariais, indicando novas abordagens mesmo em seu core. A pesquisa interdisciplinar destaca-se, integrando as ciências aplicadas. O epicentro da pesquisa atuarial deslocou-se da América do Norte para países asiáticos, sobretudo China. Finalmente, colaborações são cruciais para a produtividade e contribuições científicas de impacto, independentemente da área ou tema.
Palavras-chave:
seguros; ciências atuariais; análise bibliométrica; cienciometria; mineração textual
Introduction
Risk is the main object of study of the Actuarial Sciences (Carvalho et al., 2022). Insurance contracts are the main tool for dealing with risks, being financial instruments for asset protection against events with a low probability of occurrence and high severity, which provoke losses that can lead the affected entities to financial ruin (Euphasio Junior & Carvalho, 2022). Actuaries aid governments, regulators, funds, industries, companies, and individuals in decision-making by developing effective solutions that protect the financial future of these institutions in an ever-changing world (IAA, 2022).
In Brazil, the relevance of these professionals and their participation in institutions has been growing in recent years, due to the increased financial importance of the markets in which they operate, such as insurance and reinsurance, capitalization and supplementary pensions. According to the Superintendence of Private Insurance (SUSEP), the Brazilian market's revenue in these sectors in 2021 was R$ 306 billion, implying a share of 3.5% in the country's Gross Domestic Product, with the potential to reach 6% to 10% in coming years (SUSEP, 2022; Swiss Re Institute, 2021). These numbers reveal “a significant contribution to the construction of national savings and the country’s economic development” (SUSEP, 2022, p. 3).
Since its origins, the actuarial profession has undergone several transformations, categorized into “types”, from Type 1, which is guided by deterministic models for calculating pensions and life benefits, to Type 4, which is oriented towards enterprise risk management, in a broader sense of “management”. These different types should not be interpreted as reinventions of the profession, but rather as reflections of the evolution of the social conditions in which the actuary performs their tasks (Embrechts & Wüthrich, 2022).
Embrechts and Wüthrich (2022) state that there is currently a 5th type of actuary: a critical one, who utilizes models and data and makes socially and financially responsible decisions. Therefore, actuarial scientific production must take these aspects into account, and it is increasingly relevant for risk managers to interact with different areas of activity: Finance, Economics, Administration, Accounting, Probability, Statistics, and Computer Science, among others. It is also important that these sciences use actuarial models in their theories and processes (Shigaev & Ivashkevich, 2018).
Given constant change and uncertainty, actuarial scientific production must reflect society's current concerns and demands. Important issues such as environmental, social, and governance (ESG), climate change, and global warming are increasingly gaining prominence and it is the actuary's duty to contribute to a more sustainable economy, protecting the financial stability of companies through future-oriented risk management (Schiller & Crugnola-Humbert, 2022). In addition, actuarial research must also consider innovative aspects of already exhausted problems, such as the use of telematics through pay as/how you drive and black box models in automotive insurance (Guillen et al., 2021; Verbelen et al., 2018; Tselentis et al., 2016).
This article aims to (i) observe the scientific production in Non-Life Actuarial Sciences over the period between 2007-2022, coming after the subprime crisis in 2008, and seeking to capture the modern advances in risk management techniques; and (ii) analyze the global non-life actuarial scientific production, providing insights into the direction in which new research trends point.
Unlike other studies in this area, which often focus only on specific niches of knowledge and limit themselves to describing what has already been done, this work stands out by comprehensively addressing an entire area of Applied Social Sciences. Its purpose goes beyond mere description, seeking to fully map the field and thus contribute to new research directions. The execution is not restricted to central themes, such as risk management and solvency models, but also extends to emerging trends, such as climate change, extreme events, use of telematics, and IFRS. To this end, a bibliometric analysis (a quantitative literature review model that allows objectively assessing a research topic) and text mining (structuring of textual data which allows for the identification of significant patterns and hidden relationships in unstructured data) were carried out, with information extracted from the two main databases of scientific productions.
Theoretical perspective
The evaluation of the scientific production in a given field of human knowledge is relevant for several reasons. The first is the indication of which topics are being explored as trends, from a broad perspective, ranging from classic to emerging subjects. In addition, it enables the identification of the most notable authors and the research institutions to which they are connected (Donthu et al., 2021a).
Both bibliometric and systematic literature review articles fulfill this role of revealing consolidated lines and new research problems to researchers (Rossetto et al., 2018; Snyder, 2019), but a fundamental point for a good literature review is that it must be evaluated with depth and scientific rigor (Palmatier et al., 2018). Thus, researchers can (i) identify gaps more clearly, allowing new conceptual developments and methodological approaches; and (ii) establish new networks of collaboration and interaction, by recognizing similarities in approaches from different research groups around the world.
However, it is important to differentiate bibliometric analysis from other review tools, such as meta-analysis and systematic literature reviews. Simply put, a meta-analysis uses studies to estimate the direction and size of effects in relationships, in addition to explaining variations between studies in effect size and the factors that explain such variations (Aguinis et al., 2011). Systematic literature reviews, on the other hand, are based on domain, method, and theory, and encapsulate the acquisition, organization, and evaluation of literature through procedures (Palmatier et al., 2018) that are typically performed manually (e.g., content and thematic analyses).
Bibliometric studies are well suited to scientific mapping where the emphasis on empirical contributions produces voluminous, fragmented, and controversial research streams (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). In these cases, bibliometrics proves itself useful as a research tool, as well as for managing and evaluating research activities (González-Alcaide, 2021). According to González-Alcaide (2021), bibliometric studies show an “uncontrollable” pattern of dynamic development, with the number of articles published with this method increasing twelvefold in the last 15 years and gradually extending to all disciplines (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). The publication of bibliometric studies in journals outside the fields of Information Science and Library Science reflects the broader interest in bibliometrics as a research methodology (González-Alcaide, 2021).
Complementing the bibliometric analysis, with improvements in artificial intelligence, new processes have been introduced, which transform texts into structured data to be analyzed quantitatively. One of them is text mining, which uses statistical and machine learning methods to extract information from large volumes of texts written in natural language, seeking to identify patterns and trends, as well as new relationships between textual data that may be hidden (Schlogl & Dutra, 2020). Text mining not only analyzes textual data efficiently but also does so in a transparent and reproducible way (Humphreys & Wang, 2018).
Actuarial Science is constantly growing and is of utmost importance for solving current challenges (in the insurance area alone, the following are mentioned: longevity bonds, insurance against natural and agricultural catastrophes, parametric insurance schemes, pandemic bonds, and cyber risks) (Embrechts & Wüthrich, 2022). Given the breadth of applicability of Actuarial Science and its recent growth, we understand that there is an opportunity for bibliometric research alongside text mining to observe research trends and gaps, the main theories, authors, and collaboration networks.
Actuarial Science: an interdisciplinary Applied Social Science
The origins of Actuarial Science date back to the Probability and Statistics of the Scandinavian school, whose seminal works by Lundberg (1903) and Cramér (1930) originated the prolific Ruin Theory and Non-Life Actuarial Mathematics, strongly based on Stochastic Processes and convolutions of probabilistic distributions. In contrast to the Scandinavian school (with an objective/frequentist interpretation of event reproducibility), the Italian school advocates the subjective interpretation of probability, aligned with Bayesian Inference methods of measurement (Feduzi et al., 2012).
Both schools of thought are more concerned with methods than with the applied problems faced by economic agents. In the last decades, researchers have found many intersections between Actuarial Science (the science of risk management) and the areas of Economics, Accounting and Business. Among them (i) insurance and behavioral economics: economic agents may not behave according to Utility Theory when they are at risk and, therefore, behavioral economics can help to understand aspects related to the demand for insurance (Harrison & Ng, 2019); (ii) actuarial accounting, which uses actuarial methods to measure assets and liabilities in financial statements (B. D. R. Carvalho & Carvalho, 2019; Cazzari & Moreira, 2022), and (iii) the “Actuarial Function” in the development of new products. In business, the role of the Actuarial Function is to validate the work carried out by operational units, acting as a “second line of defense” in which the responsible person permeates the entire organization. This administrative model represents a significant transformation in terms of content, interaction and culture in companies (Voggenauer, 2022).
Only in recent years have relevant journals produced special research calls on the insurance industry, specifically addressing both classic themes such as health (Courbage & Nyman, 2017), longevity, and pension systems (Blake & MacMinn, 2021; Bugler et al., 2021; Ghilarducci & Webb, 2017), as well as contemporary issues such as cyber risks (Eling, 2018), microinsurance (Dror, 2016), climate risks (Golnaraghi & Mahul 2017), and behavioral insurance (Laeven et al., 2021). There were also more comprehensive research calls, which published several modern topics (Feng et al., 2022).
Afonso (2020) states that, according to the International Actuarial Association (IAA), Actuarial Sciences are segmented into six areas: Financial Risks, Non-Life, Health, Life, Consulting, and Social Security/Supplementary. He reviewed the articles published in the Accounting & Finance Journal in recent years, concluding that works in Life and Pensions predominate, but with a tendency towards decentralization of these areas. However, a warning is made: high-level research in Brazil depends heavily on the existence of an expanded community of researchers, which will only occur when more centers offer undergraduate and master's/doctorate courses in Actuarial Science. Interestingly, this diagnosis is in line with the findings of Silva et al. (2013), who identified that even scientific production in Finance (an area much more consolidated than Actuarial Sciences) in Brazil is highly concentrated in a few authors.
Quite recently, some bibliometric reviews related to insurance application areas have been carried out, but only in specific areas: climate change insurance (Nobanee et al., 2021, 2022), stochastic mortality projections (Redzwan & Ramli, 2022), health (Nayak et al., 2022), abandonment of life insurance policies (Shamsuddin et al., 2022), governance and performance of insurance companies (Anderloni et al., 2020), and even deposit insurance to assess banking stability (Sardana & Singhania, 2022). Furthermore, other comprehensive reviews such as the one presented in this work were not identified (i.e., Non-Life Actuarial Mathematics and other relevant topics in risk management and solvency models, directly related to insurers and reinsurers).
Bibliometrics and text mining in literature reviews
Bibliometrics is defined as the quantitative study of the production, dissemination, socialization, and disclosure of recorded information (Macias-Chapula, 1998). Although its formal beginning dates back to the 1960s (Pritchard, 1969), there have been recent advances, with this technique gaining prominence in the main business and management journals (Donthu et al., 2020).
Among the areas that have applied this technique are Finance (Guaita Martínez et al., 2022; Jeris et al., 2022; Leal et al., 2013; Linnenluecke et al., 2017; Silva et al., 2013; Niknejad et al., 2021), Accounting (Linnenluecke et al., 2020; Rocha & Ferreira, 2021), Marketing (Donthu et al., 2021b; Mazzon & Hernandez, 2013), Human Resources (Andersen, 2021; Mascarenhas & Barbosa, 2013), and interdisciplinary research such as strategy and ESG aspects (Bhatnagar & Sharma, 2022; Borgholthaus et al., 2023; Gallucci et al., 2022; Kumar et al., 2021; L. Zhang et al., 2022).
Lis-Gutiérrez et al. (2022) analyzed, utilizing bibliometrics, the differences in scientific production among countries from 2001 to 2021. The authors concluded that scientific production in Asia, North America and Western Europe is, on average, higher than in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. These last three regions did not present significant differences among each other.
In Brazilian literature, several efforts have been made. Ribeiro (2018) evaluated the Brazilian scientific production in the areas of Administration, Accounting, and Tourism in national journals. According to him, there was an increase in bibliometric studies from 2007 onwards, a finding similar to that of Pereira et al. (2019).
Furthermore, bibliometric studies in Economics (Silveira et al., 2016), Industry and Technology (Gonçales Filho et al., 2016; Pacchini et al., 2020), Innovation (Pinsky et al., 2015; Speroni et al., 2015), and Learning (Figueiredo et al., 2014) can also be cited. Another area that presents a growing number of bibliometric studies in Brazil is Health, focusing on aspects of Medicine or Management (Alonso et al., 2016; Barbosa et al., 2020; Vieira et al., 2020), but still without bibliometric studies focused on health insurance.
Text mining is the process that involves “collecting textual data, followed by its structuring, and analysis, adding or removing linguistic elements, transformation, and representation of the text as numbers” (Schlogl & Dutra, 2020, p. 3). The main objective of this process is to analyze textual data to identify patterns and trends among them (Aggarwal & Zhai, 2012). Furthermore, it is possible to use text mining to obtain new information about the text that goes beyond its written content (Francis & Flynn, 2010).
Some works employed text mining as a literature review tool, such as Antons et al. (2020), who used it for the review of innovation research, identifying the current state at the time, patterns of evolution and priorities in development, and Gurcan & Cagiltay (2023), who used it to point out new research trends in distance education. Other studies employed text mining as a research methodology applied to the area of Actuarial Sciences, as Zinn and Müller, that utilized this technique on political debates, social media, and government documents to gain insights about risk communication in the public sphere. However, we have not yet been able to identify studies in the area of Actuarial Science that combined bibliometrics and text mining as literature review tools, which is another distinguishing feature of this work.
Methodology
First, a bibliometric analysis was performed. As there are different guidelines for such execution, this work followed the guidelines of Donthu et al. (2021a) and Blockmans et al. (2014). According to them, bibliometrics is divided into two main components: (i) performance analysis, and (ii) knowledge mapping. While the first describes the performance of authors, research centers, and countries most active in scientific production in a certain area, the second highlights the relationships between entities that constitute the research.
Table 1 shows a few metrics and techniques utilized in bibliometrics and linked to these two components.
For this study, two databases were consulted: Scopus and Web of Science. They are the largest databases of research documents in the world and offer broad coverage of academic areas such as Social Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Health Sciences (Singh et al., 2021).
The details of the process for obtaining articles are shown in Table 2.
During the process of merging the databases, formatting treatments were carried out to ensure the correct grouping of information (e.g., standardizing characters such as “&” or “and” in the name of the same journal between the databases).
Once the bibliographic database was obtained, which contains information such as the document title, authors' names, affiliations, source, and year of publication, among others, it was possible to create and analyze bibliometric maps, tables, and graphs through the interface Biblioshiny of the package Bibliometrix in R (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). This interface is a widely used tool that performs multiple analyses, being unique in relation to other tools (Moral-Muñoz et al., 2020).
To analyze patterns and identify research trends that could be highlighted, the abstracts of all articles in the database were extracted and text mining was performed. In this process, the first step was to fragment each abstract into tokens (words or sets of words), removing tokens that were useless for the analysis (common words, such as articles and prepositions, excluded according to lexical attributes of the English language).
Afterwards, for the abstracts of each group of data defined in the bibliometric search, similarities among word frequencies within the groups were analyzed, followed by trend analysis, building graphs that relate the terms present in the abstracts, mapping the intensity of research on the topic, and pointing out probable directions of research in the area, measuring the “key terms” best correlated with the group’s topic.
Presentation and discussions of results
Based on the criteria established in the previous section, Table 3 presents some statistics regarding the data groups, including documents without a group (within “Total”):
The sum of the number of articles in the first seven groups is greater than the total, as there are documents that belong to more than one group, as is the case of a study in which solvency models were analyzed from new risk management perspectives, which made it part of both “Risk Management” and “Solvency”, for instance.
Table 4 presents the most relevant publishing journals, with the most articles published in the period, as well as the number of times each of them was cited among the total documents.
The results imply that IME and JRI are extremely important journals in this field, both in terms of publication and impact (citations). Furthermore, there are journals with many publications but few citations (e.g., PLOS1, which publishes research across various scientific disciplines) and journals that are highly cited but have few publications in Non-Life (e.g., JBF, which is not specific to the area, but contains publications that intersect with Actuarial Sciences).
Considering the journals cited in Table 4, only two were not indexed in any of the databases throughout the entire period of analysis: SR, indexed in 2011, and Risks, indexed in 2015. This is a relevant point to justify that, for the most part, the increase in publications is not linked to an increase in database coverage, but to the relevance of the area itself.
Another important point is the increasing relevance of certain journals over the past few years, as indicated in Figure 1 by the annual number of articles published in this field. Generally, these journals focus on specific themes, addressing problems that can be solved through actuarial techniques. This illustrates the fact that Actuarial Sciences present, in their essence, an interdisciplinary and integrative character within the applied sciences. One example is IJERPH, which features several publications portraying how risk management techniques applied to issues related to climate change and extreme events, allow for solutions to problems related to the environment and public health.
Regarding the geographical distribution of scientific production in Non-Life Actuaries, the countries with the largest productions in the period were the United States (15,562 publications), China (14,493), the United Kingdom (3,651), Germany (3,537) and Canada (2,274). In this ranking, Brazil occupies the 25th position (of 142), with 388 publications. Note that the sum of these quantities is greater than the total number of publications in the period, showing that a large part of the articles produced resulted from international partnerships and collaborations. This same conclusion is supported by Figure 2, which shows the proportion of articles produced by authors from a single country compared to those produced by authors from multiple countries, showing the 15 countries with the highest publication counts alongside Brazil.
In this sense, Table 3 also shows that approximately 85 % of the articles produced in the period were written by more than one author, highlighting the importance of establishing co-authorship partnerships in research, both national and international (on average, there were almost 4 authors per document).
Once a general overview of scientific production in Non-Life Actuaries has been established, specific aspects of the actuarial core (i.e., Risk Management and Solvency) and actuarial trends (i.e., emerging themes, such as Climate Change, Extreme Events, Telematics, Cyber Insurance and IFRS, which, although not exactly a new theme, has gained prominence with the issuance and implementation of IFRS 17), will be highlighted below.
Researches on the actuarial core
Since managing risks is an intrinsic task of actuaries, a natural question arises: does this reflect in their scientific production? To assess this, we first analyzed the amount of research related to Risk Management and Solvency during the period, and the results (Figure 3) highlight the sustained research in Solvency and the growing production linked to Risk Management. With increasing economic adversities (Fonseca & Carvalho, 2025) and a corresponding rise in regulation (Born & Klimaszewski-Blettner, 2013; Campiglio et al., 2018), the development/improvement of management techniques and models are expected to protect the financial assets of companies and individuals.
Then, we examined which journals and authors played a prominent role, either due to the significant number of published works and/or the impact of their publications (Table 5).
It is noteworthy that IME is a significant journal in terms of both publication and influence for both topics. Regarding the authors, it is observed that there are numerous international collaboration networks in Risk Management. However, in Solvency, these networks are stronger with partnerships between the United States, China, Canada, and several European countries (Figure 4).
Although these themes belong to the actuarial core, the research interest within them has varied over time, as shown in Figure 5, where the scientific evolution of the theme and the pointing of new directions, with different approaches, can be observed.
From Figures 6 and 7, the studies on Risk Management highlight insurance as a central mechanism for risk transfer in uncertainty management. Furthermore, the articles on Solvency also explore the interrelationship between risk management and insurance coverage. The darker and denser the line, the greater the interrelationship between the subjects illustrated in the graphs. Additionally, the terms most correlated with Management and Solvency are presented.
The terms most correlated with “Solvency” indicate the importance of the relationship between solvency and capital requirements, internal solvency models, and the limitations of the current European regulatory framework. Those most correlated with “Management” point to new strategies that are applicable and effective in mitigating risks, especially those related to natural disasters (such as floods). The data in Figures 6 and 7 suggest the future of research on these topics, summarized in possible research problems (Table 6):
Actuarial trends
Trends are topics that gain popularity over a period and indicate new developments in research. In the case of academic research, these subjects are extremely relevant because they highlight areas with a shortage of studies and, consequently, many questions that have not yet been answered.
In Non-Life, current trends include topics such as Climate Change, Extreme Events, Telematics, Cyber Insurance and IFRS (due to the implementation of IFRS 17). Based on the evolution of the number of publications (Figure 8), it is evident that, over 15 years, the total number of studies produced in these areas has increased nearly tenfold. Furthermore, all topics have experienced a rise in the annual number of publications, with Cyber Insurance and Telematics showing particularly rapid growth in the last five years.
Table 7 presents the journals and authors that stand out in research on these topics.
Interestingly, the leading journals differ not only across specific topics but also in relation to core actuarial science. Besides, regarding Climate Change, the results obtained align with previous findings (Nobanee et al., 2022), reinforcing the need for insurance to be considered a tool for reducing the social impact of risks associated with the environment.
Figure 9 highlights the geographic distribution of scientific production and international collaboration networks among researchers for each of these trends.
From this panel, it is clear that climate change is a global concern, and there are numerous networks between countries. For the topic Extreme Events, partnerships are concentrated between the US and Europe or the US and China (the same applies to Cyber Insurance, although Sino-American partnerships are predominant). The same does not occur for Telematics: in addition to there being few countries researching this topic, the strongest network is between the United Kingdom and Spain. In the case of IFRS, the collaboration network is restricted to a few European countries, as there is still some resistance from several countries (e.g., Brazil, the US) to officially adopting international accounting standards.
Figures 10-14 show the research approaches in these areas: regarding IFRS, the studies focus on the adoption of international accounting standards and the impacts of adopting IFRS 17. The articles on cyber insurance analyze how to mitigate cyber risk, design new policies and evaluate the market for these products. The articles on telematics address usage-based insurance (considering both frequency and manner of vehicle use), analyzing aspects of behavioral insurance and the challenges in designing products due to the scarcity of data.
The studies on climate change suggest new mechanisms for transferring and reducing risks associated with these events, focusing on parametric insurance and the construction of financial protections against natural disasters. Among the words most correlated with extreme events and climate change, the following stand out: relationships with agriculture, the increased frequency of extreme events and Extreme Value Theory (EVT) as a technique for modeling.
Table 8 provides some insights for future research on these topics, summarized in possible research problems:
Through text mining, it is possible to identify similarities between texts, measured by the correlation of word frequencies. Table 9 shows the values of these correlations for each pair of themes analyzed:
Generally, there is a high degree of similarity between all these themes, reinforcing the integrative nature of Actuarial Sciences and valuing research in collaboration groups, both nationally and internationally. In particular, there is great similarity between Risk Management and Climate Change, enabling closer ties between research groups in these areas, both due to the underlying theme and the methodology employed in the work.
Furthermore, the data evidence that climate change is an object of study in risk management, integrating this theme into the actuarial core. Significant similarities also exist between Extreme Events and Solvency (in addition to Risk Management and Climate Change), showing that these events impact the risk management and solvency of insurers, driving future research.
What about the Brazilian production?
Following the global trend, Brazilian production in Non-Life Actuary has also grown in recent years. Figure 15 shows that this growth occurred in two distinct years (2016 and 2019). Since the topics covered in these works are very different from each other (ranging from Health to Agriculture), it was not possible to determine a reason for this.
Another interesting point is the diversity of publications in different journals: there were more than 110 journals with articles by Brazilian authors published in this area. The journals with the highest number of publications were: Revista de Administração Contemporânea (7 publications), Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural (7 publications), Revista Brasileira de Gestão de Negócios (7 publications) and Revista Contabilidade & Finanças (5 publications).
Table 10 shows how many articles with Brazilian authors were published in the journals presented in Table 4, along with their affiliations and the respective year of publication.
The results in Table 10 reinforce the fact that publications in high-impact journals result mostly from partnerships between consolidated research groups, both nationally and internationally, which aligns with recent findings (S. Zhang et al., 2022). Interestingly, in all national institutions, the authors are linked to Mathematics and Statistics institutes (including FGV-RJ), rather than to business schools.
Final considerations
In this study, pioneering in the selected knowledge area, a bibliometric study was carried out that allowed us to evaluate the historical evolution of scientific publications on fundamental themes, as well as to identify relevant authors and journals in Actuarial Science. It is worth noting that the two most important databases were used for the bibliometric analysis. In addition, it was possible to identify the major research trends, shedding light on the major challenges that not only researchers, but mainly societies, face.
The results suggest that there has been a significant shift in the topics addressed by Actuarial Science, even in its core areas (i.e., Risk Management and Solvency). Interdisciplinary research has gained relevance, indicating that insurance is considered an important instrument to reduce the financial impact of risks faced by companies and individuals. Among these risks, those associated with climate change, extreme events, and cyber risk have gained attention from scientists in different areas, including actuaries.
Additionally, it was evident that the establishment of collaboration networks is a determining factor in productivity and high-impact scientific contributions, regardless of field or topic. The results are in line with previous findings (S. Zhang et al., 2022), and one trend is clear: the center of the actuarial world has shifted from North America and Europe to the establishment of partnerships with Asian countries, especially China, corroborating evidence already found (Didenko & Sidelnyk, 2021).
Future studies may extend the analyses to other branches of Actuarial Science, such as health insurance and pensions, whose financing structures represent challenges that several countries need to face with their populations.
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Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Harvard Dataverse at http://doi.org/ 10.7910/DVN/RLSUTD.
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Harvard Dataverse at http://doi.org/ 10.7910/DVN/RLSUTD.
Source: own elaboration.
Source: own elaboration.
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