Past exam of the probability course of the University of Oxford / 2023 / 3 / b / i

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 $q=1-p$, the transition probabilities on ${\mathbb{Z}}_{\ge 0}$ areand all other entries are zero. In particular $P(0,1)=1$ and $d_0=0$. The row sum is $[kp+\theta +kq]/(k+\theta )=1$. Every neighboring pair communicates, so this is an irreducible Markov chain, specifically a birth-death-immigration jump chain.