Paper No. 05-5
SD Jacka, Z Lazic and J Warren
Conditioning an Additive Functional of a Markov Chain to stay Non-Negative II: Hitting a High Level
Date: May 2005
Abstract: Let X be a continuous-time irreducible Markov chain on a finite statespace E, and let ϕ be an additive functional of X. We consider the cases where the process ϕ is oscillating and where ϕ has a negative drift. In each of these cases we condition the process X on the event that ϕ hits level y before hitting zero, and prove weak convergence of the conditioned process as y tends to ∞. In addition, we show the relation between conditioning the process ϕ with a negative drift to oscillate and conditioning it to stay non-negative until large time, and the relation between conditioning a ϕ with negative drift to drift to ∞ and conditioning it to hit large levels before hitting zero.