TY - JOUR
T1 - Growth of integral transforms and extinction in critical Galton-Watson processes
AU - Tokarev, Daniel
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - The mean time to extinction of a critical Galton-Watson process with initial population size k is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to two integral transforms: one involving the kth iterate of the probability generating function and one involving the generating function itself. Relating the growth of these transforms to the regular variation of their arguments, immediately connects statements involving the regular variation of the probability generating function, its iterates at 0, the quasistationary measures, their partial sums, and the limiting distribution of the time to extinction. In the critical case of finite variance we also give the growth of the mean time to extinction, conditioned on extinction occurring by time n
AB - The mean time to extinction of a critical Galton-Watson process with initial population size k is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to two integral transforms: one involving the kth iterate of the probability generating function and one involving the generating function itself. Relating the growth of these transforms to the regular variation of their arguments, immediately connects statements involving the regular variation of the probability generating function, its iterates at 0, the quasistationary measures, their partial sums, and the limiting distribution of the time to extinction. In the critical case of finite variance we also give the growth of the mean time to extinction, conditioned on extinction occurring by time n
UR - http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?verb=Display&version=1.0&service=UI&handle=euclid.jap/1214950361&page=record
U2 - 10.1239/jap/1214950361
DO - 10.1239/jap/1214950361
M3 - Article
VL - 45
SP - 472
EP - 480
JO - Journal of Applied Probability
JF - Journal of Applied Probability
SN - 0021-9002
IS - 2
ER -