In many applications, common factors influence a set of failure (or survival) times of interest. This is, for instance, the case in mortality analysis, where mortality is influenced by socio-economic and health factors, or in the analysis of time-to-failure observations, where the items are...

Mortality improvements pose a challenge for the life annuity business. For the management of such portfolios, it is important to forecast future mortality rates. Standard models for mortality forecasting assume that the force of mortality at age x in calendar year t is of the form exp, where the...