Approximation of the first passage time distribution for the birth-death processes

Abstract: We propose a general method to obtain approximation of the first passage time distribution for the birth-death processes. We rely on the general properties of birth-death processes, Keilson's theorem and the concept of Riemann sum to obtain closed-form expressions. We apply the method to the three selected birth-death processes and the sophisticated order-book model exhibiting long-range memory. We discuss how our approach contributes to the competition between spurious and true long-range memory models.