Hi all,

I have uploaded version 0.1.2-13 of the ChainLadder package to
http://code.google.com/p/chainladder/ and also to CRAN.

My understanding is that you can get the new version of the package from CRAN for R 2.10.x and R 2.9.x
If you use an older version of R (<2.10) you should be able to use the ChainLadder package from the project web site:
http://code.google.com/p/chainladder/downloads/list

And now the details!

Version 0.1.2-13
================
USER-VISIBLE CHANGES

 o 'MackChainLadder' has new argument 'alpha' as an additional weighting parameter. 
    As a result, the argument 'weights' is now just that, weights should be between 0 and 1.
    The argument 'alpha' describes the different chain ladder age-to-age factors:
    The default for alpha for all development periods is 1. See Mack's 1999 paper: 
    alpha=1 gives the historical chain ladder age-to-age factors, 
    alpha=0 gives the straight average of the observed individual development factors and 
    alpha=2 is the result of an ordinary regression with intercept 0. 

 o Basic 'chainladder' function now available using linear models. See ?chainladder for more information.

 o More examples for 'MackChainLadder' demonstrate how to apply the MackChainLadder over 
   several triangles in 'one-line'.

 o 'as.data.frame.triangle' has new argument 'lob' (e.g. line of business) which allows to set 
   an additional label column in the data frame output.

BUG FIXES

 o 'MackChainLadder':  Latest position of incomplete triangles were in some cases not returned 
    correctly. Thanks to Ben Escoto for reporting and providing a patch.

 o 'MackChainLadder': 
   - Mack.S.E was not correctly calculated for non-standard chain ladder age-to-age factors (e.g. 
     straight averages or ordinary regression through the origin) due the missing argument 
     for 'alpha'. 
   - Chain ladder age-to-age factors were always applied to diagonal elements to calculate forecasts,
     although data in sub-diagonal triangle could exist. 
     Many thanks to Przemyslaw Sloma for reporting those issues. 

The source code of the package is available here: http://code.google.com/p/chainladder/source/browse/#svn/trunk

As usual any feedback, suggestions, contribution, etc are much appreciated. Don't be shy!

Best regards

Markus


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