Welcome to my Google site. My name is David Tan, and I am currently an Associate Professor of Finance at the American University of the Middle East in Kuwait. I'm also an Honorary Associate Professor of Finance at Macquarie University situated in Sydney, Australia.

My current research interests include corporate finance, mitigating climate change risks, universal basic income, aviation economics, tourism portfolios, and trading algorithms. My research work has been published in various highly-ranked journals such as the Journal of Travel Research, Quantitative Finance, Journal of Business Ethics, Annals of Tourism Research, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Regional Studies, and Urban Studies.

As can be gleaned from my publication outlets, I am a multidisciplinary researcher. I enjoy applying econometrics and data analytical tools to different world-real problems in order to achieve novel insights. For example, I have worked on stripping the fund manager skill in positively- and negatively-screen ESG funds using a bootstrapping technique to conduct a clean experiment on ESG screening and portfolio risk-return outcomes. In a joint project with Qantas Airways, I've applied bootstrapping to QAR (quick access recorder) data of to determine the optimal fuel uplift that minimises the fuel carriage penalty whilst maintaining the same (practical) risk of fuel exhaustion.

More recently, I've applied the modern portfolio theory (the backbone of portfolio construction) to tourism flows from Australia's tourist origin-markets. That is, figuring out how to use mathematics to optimise the diversity of tourists by minimising the seasonality in tourism-revenue and ensuring a steadier stream of national income.

Statistical models are tools that are meant to be applied to bold ideas and across new domains. This keeps research impactful, and - more importantly - fun.