Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-probability-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/3/b/i/solution

Under the specified evolution rule, conditional on the entire history, the next event's probability distribution depends only on the current population size. This is the time-homogeneous Markov property. Birth and immigration both increase the size by one, while death decreases it by one. Writing , the transition probabilities on are
and all other entries are zero. In particular and . The row sum is . Every neighboring pair communicates, so this is an irreducible Markov chain, specifically a birth-death-immigration jump chain.

New to topics? Read the docs here!