On the First Passage Time Distribution for a Class of Markov Chains

Consider a stochastically monotone chain with monotone paths on a partially ordered countable set S. Let C be an increasing subset of S with finite complement. Then the first passage-time from i ∈ S to C is shown to be IFRA (increasing failure rate on the,av;rage). Several applications are presented including coherent systems, shock models, and convolutions of IFRA distributions