Geometric renewal convergence rates from hazard rates

Abstract

This paper studies the geometric convergence rate of a discrete renewal sequence to its limit. A general convergence rate is first derived from the hazard rates of the renewal lifetimes. This result is used to extract a good convergence rate when the lifetimes are ordered in the sense of new better than used or increasing hazard rate. A bound for the best possible geometric convergence rate is derived for lifetimes having a finite support. Examples demonstrating the utility and sharpness of the results are presented. Several of the examples study convergence rates for Markov chains.