On Non-reversible Markov Chains

Reversibility is a suucient but not necessary condition for Markov chains for use in Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. It is necessary to select a Markov chain that has a pre-speciied distribution as its unique stationary distribution. There are many Markov chains that have such property. We give guidelines on how to rank them based on the asymptotic variance of the estimates they produce. Two questions are addressed. First, how to select a Markov chain among several non-reversible (or reversible) ones. Second, given a non-reversible Markov chain, is there a reversible one with the same (or better) performance?