In this paper we obtain the central limit theorem for triangular arrays of non-homogeneous Markov chains under a condition imposed to the maximal coefficient of correlation. The proofs are based on martingale techniques and a sharp lower bound estimate for the variance of partial sums. The results complement an important central limit theorem of Dobrushin based on the contraction coefficient.
A transition matrix $[U_{i,j}]_{i,j\geq 0}$ on $\mathbb{N}$ is said to be almost upper triangular if $U_{i,j}\geq 0\Rightarrow j\geq i-1$, so that the increments of the corresponding Markov chains are at least $-1$; a transition matrix $[L_{i,j}]_{i,j\geq 0}$ is said to be almost lower triangular if $L_{i,j}\geq 0\Rightarrow j\leq i+1$, and then, the increments of the corresponding Markov chains are at most $+1$. In the present paper, we characterize the recurrence, positive recurrence and invariant distribution for the class of almost triangular transition matrices. The upper case appears to …
In 1956, Dobrushin proved a definitive central limit theorem for non-homogeneous Markov chains. In this note, a shorter and different proof elucidating more the assumptions is given through martingale approximation.
It is shown how a natural representation of perpetuities as asymptotically homogeneous in space Markov chains allows to prove various asymptotic tail results for stable perpetuities and limit theorems for unstable ones. Some of these results are new while others essentially improve moment conditions known in the literature. Both subexponential and Cramér's cases are considered.
Improved rates of convergence for ergodic homogeneous Markov chains are studied. In comparison to the earlier papers the setting is also generalised to the case without a unique dominated measure. Examples are provided where the new bound is compared with the classical Markov -- Dobrushin inequality and with the second eigenvalue of the transition matrix for finite state spaces.
The class of nonlinear Markov processes is characterized by the dependence of the current state of the process on its current distribution in addition to the dependence on the previous state. Due to this feature, these processes are characterized by complex limit behavior and ergodic properties, for which the usual criteria for Markov processes are not sufficient. Being a subclass of nonlinear Markov processes, nonlinear Markov chains have inherited these features. In this paper, conditions for the fulfillment of the central limit theorem for homogeneous nonlinear Markov chains in discrete tim…
Drawdown/regret times feature prominently in optimal stopping problems, in statistics (CUSUM procedure) and in mathematical finance (Russian options). Recently it was discovered that a first passage theory with general drawdown times, which generalize classic ruin times, may be explicitly developed for spectrally negative Lévy processes -- see Avram, Vu, Zhou(2017), Li, Vu, Zhou(2017). In this paper, we further examine general drawdown related quantities for taxed time-homogeneous Markov processes, using the pathwise connection between general drawdown and tax.
In the paper, we study a new rate of convergence estimate for homogeneous discrete-time nonlinear Markov chains based on the Markov-Dobrushin condition. This result generalizes the convergence estimates for any positive number of transition steps. An example of a class such a process provided indicates that such types of estimates considering several transition steps may be applicable when one transition can not guarantee any convergence. Moreover, a better estimate can be obtained for a higher number of transitions steps. A law of large numbers is presented for a class of ergodic nonlinear Ma…
For an indecomposable $3\times 3$ stochastic matrix (i.e., 1-step transition probability matrix) with coinciding negative eigenvalues, a new necessary and sufficient condition of the imbedding problem for time homogeneous Markov chains is shown by means of an alternate parameterization of the transition rate matrix (i.e., intensity matrix, infinitesimal generator), which avoids calculating matrix logarithm or matrix square root. In addition, an implicit description of the imbedding problem for the $3\times 3$ stochastic matrix in Johansen [J. Lond. Math. Soc., 8, 345-351. (1974)] is pointed ou…
Stochastic Volterra equations: failure of the time-homogeneous Markov property
School of Mathematical Sciences, Dublin City University（都柏林城市大学数学科学学院）；Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, TU Wien（维也纳工业大学统计与经济数学方法研究所）
We develop a method for analyzing the mixing times for a quite general class of Markov chains on the complete monomial group G \wr S_n (the wreath product of a group G with the permutation group S_n) and a quite general class of Markov chains on the homogeneous space (G \wr S_n) / (S_r \times S_{n - r}). We derive an exact formula for the L^2 distance in terms of the L^2 distances to uniformity for closely related random walks on the symmetric groups S_j for 1 \leq j \leq n or for closely related Markov chains on the homogeneous spaces S_{i + j} / (S_i \times S_j) for various values of i and j…
A study of time homogeneous, real valued Markov processes with a special property and a non-atomic initial distribution is provided. The new notion of a function of evolution of distribution which determines the dependency between one dimensional distributions of a process is introduced. This, along with the notion of bridge operators which determine the backward structure, as opposed to the forward structure determined by the usual semi-group operators, paves a way to the new approach for dealing with finite-dimensional distributions of Markov processes. This, in particular, produces explicit…
We consider the invariant measure of a homogeneous continuous- time Markov process in the quarter-plane. The basic solutions of the global balance equation are the geometric distributions. We first show that the invariant measure can not be a finite linear combination of basic geometric distributions, unless it consists of a single basic geo- metric distribution. Second, we show that a countable linear combina- tion of geometric terms can be an invariant measure only if it consists of pairwise-coupled terms. As a consequence, we obtain a complete characterization of all countable linear combin…
In this paper we investigate the kernel estimator of the density for a stationary reversible Markov chain. The proofs are based on a new central limit theorem for a triangular array of reversible Markov chains obtained under conditions imposed to covariances, which has interest in itself.
We consider a population with non-overlapping generations, whose size goes to infinity. It is described by a discrete genealogy which may be time non-homogeneous and we pay special attention to branching trees in varying environments. A Markov chain models the dynamic of the trait of each individual along this genealogy and may also be time non-homogeneous. Such models are motivated by transmission processes in the cell division, reproduction-dispersion dynamics or sampling problems in evolution. We want to determine the evolution of the distribution of the traits among the population, namely …
We consider a time-homogeneous Markov chain $X_n$, $n\ge0$, valued in ${\bf R}$. Suppose that this chain is transient, that is, $X_n$ generates a $σ$-finite renewal measure. We prove the key renewal theorem under condition that this chain has asymptotically homogeneous at infinity jumps and asymptotically positive drift.
The paper studies an improved estimate for the rate of convergence for nonlinear homogeneous discrete-time Markov chains. These processes are nonlinear in terms of the distribution law. Hence, the transition kernels are dependent on the current probability distributions of the process apart from being dependent on the current state. Such processes often act as limits for large-scale systems of dependent Markov chains with interaction. The paper generalizes the convergence results by taking the estimate over two steps. Such an approach keeps the existence and uniqueness results under assumption…
We study a time-non-homogeneous Markov process which arose from free probability, and which also appeared in the study of stochastic processes with linear regressions and quadratic conditional variances. Our main result is the explicit expression for the generator of the (non-homogeneous) transition operator acting on functions that extend analytically to complex domain. The paper is self-contained and does not use free probability techniques.
Using an approximation by a set-valued dynamical system, this paper studies a class of non Markovian and non homogeneous stochastic processes on a finite state space. It provides an unified approach to simulated annealing type processes. It permits to study new models of vertex reinforced random walks and new models of learning in games including Markovian fictitious play.
We consider the problem of characterising expected hitting times and hitting probabilities for imprecise Markov chains. To this end, we consider three distinct ways in which imprecise Markov chains have been defined in the literature: as sets of homogeneous Markov chains, as sets of more general stochastic processes, and as game-theoretic probability models. Our first contribution is that all these different types of imprecise Markov chains have the same lower and upper expected hitting times, and similarly the hitting probabilities are the same for these three types. Moreover, we provide a ch…
In this paper, the large deviations on trajectory level for ergodic Markov processes are studied. These processes take values in the non-negative quadrant of the two dimension lattice and are concentrated on step-wise functions. The rates of jumps towards the axes (jump down) depend on the position of the process -- the higher the position, the greater the rate. The rates of jumps going in the same direction as the axes (jump up) are constants. Therefore the processes are ergodic. The large deviations are studied under equal scalings of both space and time. The scaled versions of the processes…
In this paper we find nonasymptotic exponential upper bounds for the deviation in the ergodic theorem for families of homogeneous Markov processes. We find some sufficient conditions for geometric ergodicity uniformly over a parametric family. We apply this property to the nonasymptotic nonparametric estimation problem for ergodic diffusion processes.
In this work we study the Hausdorff dimension of measures whose weight distribution satisfies a markov non-homogeneous property. We prove, in particular, that the Hausdorff dimensions of this kind of measures coincide with their lower Rényi dimensions (entropy). Moreover, we show that the Tricot dimensions (packing dimension) equal the upper Rényi dimensions. As an application we get a continuity property of the Hausdorff dimension of the measures, when it is seen as a function of the distributed weights under the $\ell^{\infty}$ norm.
This work contributes to the theory of Wiener-Hopf type factorization for finite Markov chains. This theory originated in the seminal paper Barlow et al. (1980), which treated the case of finite time-homogeneous Markov chains. Since then, several works extended the results of Barlow et al. (1980) in many directions. However, all these extensions were dealing with time-homogeneous Markov case. The first work dealing with the time-inhomogeneous situation was Bielecki et al. (2018), where Wiener-Hopf type factorization for time-inhomogeneous finite Markov chain with piecewise constant generator m…
We suggest a method for constructing positive harmonic functions for a wide class of transition kernels on $Z^+$. We also find natural conditions under which these functions have positive finite limits at infinity. Further, we apply our results on harmonic functions to asymptotically homogeneous Markov chains on $Z^+$ with asymptotically negative drift. More precisely, assuming that Markov chain satisfy Cramér's condition, we study the tail asymptotics of the stationary distribution. In particular, we clarify the influence of the rate of convergence of jumps of the chain towards the limiting d…
Consideration is given to the three different analytical methods for the computation of upper bounds for the rate of convergence to the limiting regime of one specific class of (in)homogeneous continuous-time Markov chains. This class is particularly suited to describe evolutions of the total number of customers in (in)homogeneous $M/M/S$ queueing systems with possibly state-dependent arrival and service intensities, batch arrivals and services. One of the methods is based on the logarithmic norm of a linear operator function; the other two rely on Lyapunov functions and differential inequalit…
Invariance properties of linear functionals and linear maps on algebras of functions on quantum homogeneous spaces are studied, in particular for the special case of expected coideal *-subalgebras. Several one-to-one correspondences between such invariant functionals are established. Adding a positivity condition, this yields one-to-one correspondences of invariant quantum Markov semigroups acting on expected coideal *-subalgebras and certain convolution semigroups of states on the underlying compact quantum group. This gives an approach to classifying invariant quantum Markov semigroups on th…
Given a finite state space E, we build a universal dilation for all possible discrete time Markov chains on E, homogeneous or not: we introduce a second system (an ``environment'') and a deterministic invertible time-homogeneous global evolution of the system E with this environment such that any Markov evolution of E can be realized by a proper choice of the initial (random) state of the environment, which therefore determines the transition probabilities of the system. We also compare this dilation with the quantum dilations of a Quantum Dynamical Semigroup: given a Classical Markov Semigrou…
We study the limit behaviour of a generally non-linear ordinary differential equation whose solution is a superadditive generalisation of a stochastic matrix, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for this solution to be ergodic, in the sense that it converges to an operator that, essentially, maps functions to constants. In the linear case, the solution of our differential equation is equal to the matrix exponential of an intensity matrix and can then be interpreted as the transition operator of a homogeneous continuous-time Markov chain. Similarly, in the generalised non-linear cas…
We consider triangular arrays of Markov chains that converge weakly to a diffusion process. Local limit theorems for transition densities are proved. The observation time [0,T] may be fixed or lim n T = 0, where nh = T and h is a mesh between two neighboring observation points.
We obtain convergence rates (in the Levi-Prokhorove metric) in the functional central limit theorem (CLT) for partial sums $S_n=\sum_{j=1}^{n}ξ_{j,n}$ of triangular arrays $\{ξ_{1,n},ξ_{2,n},...,ξ_{n,n}\}$ satisfying some mixing and moment conditions (which are not necessarily uniform in $n$). For certain classes of additive functionals of triangular arrays of contracting Markov chains (in the sense of Dobrushin) we obtain rates which are close to the best rates obtained for independent random variables. In addition, we obtain close to optimal rates in the usual CLT and a moderate deviations p…
We study the asymptotic behaviour of Markov chains $(X_n,η_n)$ on $\mathbb{Z}_+ \times S$, where $\mathbb{Z}_+$ is the non-negative integers and $S$ is a finite set. Neither coordinate is assumed to be Markov. We assume a moments bound on the jumps of $X_n$, and that, roughly speaking, $η_n$ is close to being Markov when $X_n$ is large. This departure from much of the literature, which assumes that $η_n$ is itself a Markov chain, enables us to probe precisely the recurrence phase transitions by assuming asymptotically zero drift for $X_n$ given $η_n$. We give a recurrence classification in ter…
In the paper we present a characterization theorem of the Riesz measure and a Wishart exponential family on homogeneous cones through the invariance property of a natural exponential family under the action of the triangular group.
Improved rates of convergence for ergodic Markov chains and relaxed conditions for them, as well as analogous convergence results for some non-homogeneous Markov chains are studied. The setting from the previous works is extended. Examples are provided where the new bounds are better and where they give the same convergence rate as in the classical Markov -- Dobrushin inequality.
We consider polygonal Markov fields originally introduced by Arak and Surgailis (1989). Our attention is focused on fields with nodes of order two, which can be regarded as continuum ensembles of non-intersecting contours in the plane, sharing a number of features with the two-dimensional Ising model. We introduce non-homogeneous version of polygonal fields in anisotropic enviroment. For these fields we provide a class of new graphical constructions and random dynamics. These include a generalised dynamic representation, generalised and defective disagreement loop dynamics as well as a general…
We investigate in a systematic way hypercontractivity property in Orlicz spaces for Markov semi-groups related to homogeneous and non homogeneous diffusions in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$. We provide an explicit construction of a family of Orlicz functions for which we prove that the associated hypercontractivity property is equivalent to a suitable functional inequality.
We consider a general class of discrete, two-dimensional Markov chains modeling the dynamics of a population with two types, without mutation or immigration, and neutral in the sense that type has no influence on each individual's birth or death parameters. We prove that all the eigenvectors of the corresponding transition matrix or infinitesimal generator Π can be expressed as the product of "universal" polynomials of two variables, depending on each type's size but not on the specific transitions of the dynamics, and functions depending only on the total population size. These eigenvectors a…
The paper is devoted to studies of perturbed Markov chains commonly used for description of information networks. In such models, the matrix of transition probabilities for the corresponding Markov chain is usually regularised by adding a special damping matrix multiplied by a small damping (perturbation) parameter $\varepsilon$. We give effective upper bounds for the rate of approximation for stationary distributions of unperturbed Markov chains by stationary distributions of perturbed Markov chains with regularised matrices of transition probabilities, asymptotic expansions for approximating…
Perfect sampling is a technique that uses coupling arguments to provide a sample from the stationary distribution of a Markov chain in a finite time without ever computing the distribution. This technique is very efficient if all the events in the system have monotonicity property. However, in the general (non-monotone) case, this technique needs to consider the whole state space, which limits its application only to chains with a state space of small cardinality. We propose here a new approach for the general case that only needs to consider two trajectories. Instead of the original chain, we…
The paper studies the time-homogeneous two-state Markov chains; the states are assumed to be binary symbols 0 and 1. The higher-order absolute differences taken from progressive states of a given chain are considered. A discrete capacity of subsets of natural series is defined and a limiting theorem for these differences, formulated in terms of Wiener criterion type relation, is presented.
In this note, we show how the penalization method, introduced in order to describe some non-trivial changes of the Wiener measure, can be applied to the study of some simple polymer models such as the pinning model. The bulk of the analysis is then focused on the study of a martingale which has to be computed as a Markovian limit.
This note develops shortly the theory of time-inhomogeneous additive functionals and is a useful support for the analysis of time-dependent Markov processes and related topics. It is a significant tool for the analysis of BSDEs in law. In particular we extend to a non-homogeneous setup some results concerning the quadratic variation and the angular bracket of Martin-gale Additive Functionals (in short MAF) associated to a homogeneous Markov processes.
We consider triangular arrays of Markov chains that converge weakly to a diffusion process. Second order Edgeworth type expansions for transition densities are proved. The paper differs from recent results in two respects. We allow nonhomogeneous diffusion limits and we treat transition densities with time lag converging to zero. Small time asymptotics are motivated by statistical applications and by resulting approximations for the joint density of diffusion values at an increasing grid of points.
In our earlier paper, a generalized Dobrushin ergodicity coefficient of Markov operators (acting on abstract state spaces) with respect to a projection $P$, has been introduced and studied. It turned out that the introduced coefficient was more effective than the usual ergodicity coefficient. In the present work, by means of a left consistent Markov projections and the generalized Dobrushin's ergodicity coefficient, we investigate uniform and weak $P$-ergodicities of non-homogeneous discrete Markov chains (NDMC) on abstract state spaces. It is easy to show that uniform $P$-ergodicity implies a…
The star-triangle transformation is used to obtain an equivalence extending over the set of all (in)homogeneous bond percolation models on the square, triangular and hexagonal lattices. Among the consequences are box-crossing (RSW) inequalities for such models with parameter-values at which the transformation is valid. This is a step toward proving the universality and conformality of these processes. It implies criticality of such values, thereby providing a new proof of the critical point of inhomogeneous systems. The proofs extend to certain isoradial models to which previous methods do not…
