Conditions for the existence of quasi-stationary distributions for birth–death processes with killing

Erik A. van Doorn

Stochastic Processes and their Applications, 2012, vol. 122, issue 6, 2400-2410

Abstract: We consider birth–death processes on the nonnegative integers, where {1,2,…} is an irreducible class and 0 an absorbing state, with the additional feature that a transition to state 0 (killing) may occur from any state. Assuming that absorption at 0 is certain we are interested in additional conditions on the transition rates for the existence of a quasi-stationary distribution. Inspired by results of Kolb and Steinsaltz [M. Kolb, D. Steinsaltz, Quasilimiting behavior for one-dimensional diffusions with killing, Ann. Probab. 40 (2012) 162–212] we show that a quasi-stationary distribution exists if the decay rate of the process is positive and exceeds at most finitely many killing rates. If the decay rate is positive and smaller than at most finitely many killing rates then a quasi-stationary distribution exists if and only if the process one obtains by setting all killing rates equal to zero is recurrent.

Keywords: Birth–death process with killing; Orthogonal polynomials; Quasi-stationary distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304414912000555
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:spapps:v:122:y:2012:i:6:p:2400-2410

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.spa.2012.03.014

Access Statistics for this article

Stochastic Processes and their Applications is currently edited by T. Mikosch

More articles in Stochastic Processes and their Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().