I study strategy-proof assignment mechanisms where the agents reveal their preference rankings over the available objects. A stochastic mechanism returns lotteries over deterministic assignments, and mechanisms are compared according to first-order stochastic dominance. I show that non-wasteful...

This article assumes general stationary processes for prices and derives the autocorrelation function for a general Moving Average (MA) trading rule to investigate why this rule is used. The result shows that the MA rule is popular because it can identify price momentum and is a simple way of...

This paper investigates the gender-selection decisions of immigrants in the United Kingdom, using data from the 1971-2006 General Household Survey. We examine sex-selective abortion in the UK among immigrant families and the gender composition of previous births, conditional on socio-economic...

Contemporary models of growth and development are founded on a category error: they ignore nature as a form of productive capital. Using as backdrop two recent books on the Indian economy that are representative of the prevailing orthodoxy, I review and in part extend an emerging literature that...

Mean-variance optimisation has been roundly criticised by financial economists and practitioners alike, leading many to advocate a simple 1/N weighting heuristic. We investigate the performance of the Markowitz technique conditional on investor forecasting ability. Using a novel analytical...

In the midst of a shortage of natural gas, Abu Dhabi has launched an investment into renewable energy. Why? Will renewables allow the Persian Gulf sheikhdom to meet rising electricity demand without simultaneous increases in conventional power? No. Even in one of the world’s sunniest places...