Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-options-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2006/n/2/i/solution

The state space is . Write . The nonzero transition probabilities are
The stationary equations give and for . Normalization gives , so
The remaining equation is satisfied, confirming stationarity.
The chain is irreducible: every positive state can jump to zero, and zero can reach every state through consecutive immigration steps. A stationary probability distribution makes it positive recurrent. Returns to zero can have lengths two and three with positive probability, so it is also aperiodic. The Markov-chain ergodic theorem now gives the almost-sure long-run time proportion for as the stationary tail:
This time-average conclusion applies to the specified start at zero.

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