King William's Tontine: Why the Retirement Annuity of the Future Should Resemble Its Past, Moshe A. Milevsky (Ed.), 2015, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 257 pages, ISBN: 978‐1‐107‐07612‐9 (Hardback).

• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jori.12309

© 2020 The Journal of Risk and Insurance. Vol. 87, No. 2, 559–564 (2020).

DOI: 10.1111/jori.12309

BOOK REVIEW

King William's Tontine: Why the Retirement Annuity of the Future Should Resemble Its

Past, Moshe A. Milevsky (Ed.), 2015, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,

257 pages, ISBN: 978‐1‐107‐07612‐9(Hardback).

Reviewer: William L. Ferguson, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette; ferguson@

louisiana.edu

What do William Shakeshafte (Shakespeare?), Methuselah's grandfather Jared

(the second‐longest lived Biblical figure), Adam Smith, Edmund Halley, Alexander

Hamilton, the Old Lady on Threadneedle Street (The Bank of England), Israeli

Kibbutzim, Swedish pensions, Detroit (Michigan)and Mobile (Alabama), Henry

B. Hyde (founder of the Equitable Life Insurance Company), the 1905 Armstrong

Investigations, Agatha Christie, and even TIAA‐CREF, among many other ex-

amples, all have in common? The answer is not some obscure throwaway punchline

regarding a much maligned old‐fashioned financing scheme, but rather a serious

response to the very contemporary problem of longevity risk, in an historical yarn

that may simply have begun: “An investor, a nominee, and an annuitant all walk

into a bar …”.InKing William's Tontine: Why the Retirement Annuity of the Future

Should Resemble Its Past, Moshe Milevsky offers a very entertaining, insightful, often

tongue‐in‐cheek but thoroughly researched scholarly review that clearly provides

the answer key: all were influenced, directly or indirectly, by “tontine thinking.”

Milevsky dedicates his book to the Jareds of the world—his Everyman—those like

us who will toil and live for potentially a very long time in obscurity, yet still must

find a way to pay for it all, as no public or private insurer, retirement system or

pension plan is truly able to efficiently support the legion of Jareds out there.

Milevsky proposes “Jared's Tontine”and/or “tontine thinking”may provide a so-

lution to the problem of longevity risk, and he provides a detailed historical analysis

to support his case.

“Tontine”in its current context first appears in the lexicon sometime around 1765,

being named after Italian entrepreneur Lorenzo de Tonti [b.1602‐d.1684], who in

1653 famously, yet unsuccessfully, began to promote an intricate financial plan to

raise funding for the French military and curry favor with then powerful Cardinal

Mazarin [b.1602‐d.1661]. Mazarin was Chief Minister, Superintendent of the Royal

Education, and the de facto leader of France from 1643 to 1661 after the deaths of

Cardinal Richelieu [December 1642] and King Louis XIII [May 1643], and until the

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