This paper provides a full classification of the dynamics for continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) on the nonnegative integers with polynomial transition rate functions and without arbitrary large backward jumps. Such stochastic processes are abundant in applications, in particular in biology. More precisely, for CTMCs of bounded jumps, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of calculable parameters for explosivity, recurrence versus transience, positive recurrence versus null recurrence, certain absorption, and implosivity. Simple sufficient conditions for exponential ergodicity of stationary distributions and quasi-stationary distributions as well as existence and nonexistence of moments of hitting times are also obtained. Similar simple sufficient conditions for the aforementioned dynamics together with their opposite dynamics are established for CTMCs with unbounded forward jumps. Finally, we apply our results to stochastic reaction networks, an extended class of branching processes, a general bursty single-cell stochastic gene expression model, and population processes, none of which are birth–death processes. The approach is based on a mixture of Lyapunov–Foster-type results, the classical semimartingale approach, and estimates of stationary measures.

It has been known for nearly a decade that deterministically modeled reaction networks that are weakly reversible and consist of a single linkage class have trajectories that are bounded from both above and below by positive constants (so long as the initial condition has strictly positive components). It is conjectured that the stochastically modeled analogs of these systems are positive recurrent. We prove this conjecture in the affirmative under the following additional assumptions: (i) the system is binary, and (ii) for each species, there is a complex (vertex in the associated reaction diagram) that is a multiple of that species. To show this result, a new proof technique is developed in which we study the recurrence properties of the n-step embedded discrete-time Markov chain.