Near-constancy phenomena in branching processes

Abstract

The occurrence of certain ‘near-constancy phenomena’ in some aspects of the theory of (simple) branching processes forms the background for the work below. The problem arises out of work by Karlin and McGregor [8, 9]. A detailed study of the theoretical and numerical aspects of the Karlin–McGregor near-constancy phenomenon was given by Dubuc[7], and considered further by Bingham[4]. We give a new approach which simplifies and generalizes the results of these authors. The primary motivation for doing this was the recent work of Barlow and Perkins [3], who observed near-constancy in a framework not immediately covered by the results then known.