A comprehensive survey of the area of birth and death processes and Markov chains with continuous time parameters. For the English edition, many new results have been added, bringing the book up-to-date and two new chapters were written, specifically for this edition.

This monograph offers a comprehensive survey of the area of birth and death processes and Markov chains with continuous time parameters. For the English edition, many new results have been added, bringing the book up-to-date. Two new chapters were written specifically for this edition.

General Concepts of Stochastic Processes.- Analytic Theory of Markov Chains.- Properties of Sample Functions.- Some Topics in Markov Chains.- Basic Theory of Birth and Death Processes. Construction Theory of Birth and Death Processes. Analytical Construction of Birth and Death Processes. Bilateral Birth and Death Processes.- Excessive Functions of Markov Chains with Discrete Time. Systems and the System Method.- Annotations on the History of the contents of Each Section.