A Multiplicative Version of the Lindley Recursion

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the stochastic recursion $W_{i+1} = [V_iW_i+Y_i]^+$ that can be interpreted as an autoregressive process of order 1, reflected at 0. We start our exposition by a discussion of the model's stability condition. Writing $Y_i=B_i-A_i$, for independent sequences of non-negative i.i.d.\ random variables ${A_i}{i\in N_0}$ and ${B_i}{i\in N_0}$, and assuming ${V_i}{i\in N_0}$ is an i.i.d. sequence as well (independent of ${A_i}{i\in N_0}$ and ${B_i}_{i\in N_0}$), we then consider three special cases: (i) $V_i$ attains negative values only and $B_i$ has a rational LST, (ii) $V_i$ equals a positive value $a$ with certain probability $p\in (0,1)$ and is negative otherwise, and both $A_i$ and $B_i$ have a rational LST, (iii) $V_i$ is uniformly distributed on $[0,1]$, and $A_i$ is exponentially distributed. In all three cases we derive transient and stationary results, where the transient results are in terms of the transform at a geometrically distributed epoch.