Global Behavior of Nonlinear Difference Equations of Higher Order with Applications

This volume presents a systematic study of the global behaviour of solutions of nonlinear scalar difference equations of order greater than one. Of particular interest are aspects such as global asymptotic stability, periodicity, permanence and persistence, and also semicycles of solutions. As well as exposing the reader to the frontiers of the subject, open problems are also formulated. The book has six chapters. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the subject and deals with preliminaries. Chapter 2 considers global stability results. Chapter 3 is devoted to rational recursive structures. Chapter 4 describes various applications. The topic of Chapter 5 is periodic cycles, and Chapter 6 discusses a number of open problems and conjectures involving interesting types of difference equations. Each chapter in cludes notes and references. The volume concludes with three appendices, a comprehensive bibliography, and name and subject indexes. This text is designed for graduate students and researchers whose work involves difference and differential equations.