On Erdös-de Bruijn-Kingman's problem on regularity of reciprocals for exponential series (Q2031507)

Summary: Motivated by applications to renewal theory, Erdös, de Bruijn and Kingman (see [\textit{N. G. de Bruijn} and \textit{P. Erdős}, J. Res. Natl. Bur. Stand. 50, 161--164 (1953; Zbl 0053.36903)]; \textit{J. F. C. Kingman} [Regenerative phenomena. John Wiley \& Sons, Hoboken, NJ (1972; Zbl 0236.60040)]) posed a problem on boundedness of reciprocals \((1-z)/(1-F(z))\) in the unit disc for probability generating functions \(F(z)\). This problem was solved by \textit{I. A. Ibragimov} [Theory Probab. Appl. 20, 174--176 (1975; Zbl 0361.60020); translation from Teor. Veroyatn. Primen. 20, 175--177 (1975)] by constructing a counterexample. In this paper, we provide much stronger counterexamples showing that the problem does not allow for a positive answer even under rather restrictive additional assumptions. Moreover, we pursue a systematic study of \(L^p\)-integrabilty properties for the reciprocals. In particular, we show that while the boundedness of \((1-z)/(1-F(z))\) fails in general, the reciprocals do possess certain \(L^p\)-integrability properties under mild conditions on \(F\). We also study the same circle of problems in the continuous-time setting.