Peter Scheffel, Heinrich von Weizsäcker

• The observation of an ergodic Markov chain asymptotically allows perfect identification of the transition matrix. In this paper we determine the rate of the information contained in the first n observations, provided the unknown transition matrix belongs to a known finite set. As an essential tool we prove new refinements of the large deviation theory of the empirical pair measure of finite Markov chains. Keywords: Markov Chain, Entropy, Bayes risk, Large Deviations.