Green's functions, harmonic functions, and volume comparison (Q1891963)

There are several sets of sufficient conditions on a complete noncompact Riemannian manifold to insure that it possesses a positive Green function -- as well as several methods of proof. The present paper gives a fine generalization and unified treatment of (most of) these; an important ingredient is a volume comparison condition, which is carefully analyzed. Applications are made to spaces of harmonic functions when the manifold has Ricci curvature nonnegative outside of a compact set.