Geometrical aspects of the theory of non-homogeneous Markov chains

Author(s):  
J. F. C. Kingman

AbstractA geometrical representation of the transition matrices of a non-homogeneous chain with N states, in terms of certain convex subsets of , is used to describe aspects of the chain. For example, an important theorem of Cohn on the structure of the tail σ-field is a simple corollary. The embedding problem is shown to be entirely geometrical in character. The representation extends to Markov processes on quite general state spaces, and the tail is then represented by the projective limit of these convex sets.

1978 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. J. Engelbert

1975 ◽  
Vol 12 (04) ◽  
pp. 744-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Tweedie

In many Markov chain models, the immediate characteristic of importance is the positive recurrence of the chain. In this note we investigate whether positivity, and also recurrence, are robust properties of Markov chains when the transition laws are perturbed. The chains we consider are on a fairly general state space : when specialised to a countable space, our results are essentially that, if the transition matrices of two irreducible chains coincide on all but a finite number of columns, then positivity of one implies positivity of both; whilst if they coincide on all but a finite number of rows and columns, recurrence of one implies recurrence of both. Examples are given to show that these results (and their general analogues) cannot in general be strengthened.


1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.B. Athreya ◽  
P.E. Ney

A new construction of regeneration times is exploited to prove ergodic and renewal theorems for semi-Markov processes on general state spaces. This work extends results of the authors in Ann. Probability (6 (1978), 788–797).


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