Recursions in Forensic Economics

This note is about recursions and two specific recursions that have become part of the forensic economics literature. We explain the concept of a recursion with clear examples and within a context most likely to be encountered by, and used by, forensic economists. The example calculations presented in this note are rich enough to illustrate essential ideas, but they do not get bogged down in unnecessary details. Three examples of recursions are proffered – the first is from mathematics, the second deals with probabilities of survival and leads to the probability mass function (pmf) for additional years of life, and the third focuses on additional years of labor market activity and ultimately the pmf for activity (Skoog and Ciecka, 2002 and 2011). This last example demonstrates the efficiency of recursions relative to other computational methods. We begin with a definition of