| Abstract: | Starting from an abstract setting which extends the property “skip free to the left” for transition matrices to a partition of the state space, we develop bounds for the mean hitting time of a Markov chain to an arbitrary subset from an arbitrary initial law. We apply our theory to the embedded Markov chains associated with the M/G/1 and the GI/M/1 queueing systems. We also illustrate its applicability with an asymptotic analysis of a non-reversible Markovian star queueing network with losses. |
