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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
We study two aspects of discrete-time birth-death processes, the common feature of which is the central role played by the decay parameter of the process. First, conditions for geometric ergodicity and bounds for the decay parameter are obtained. Then the existence and structure of quasi-stationary distributions are discussed. The analyses are based on the spectral representation for the n-step transition probabilities of a birth-death process developed by Karlin and McGregor.