The question of when a square, linear operator is quasimonotone nondecreasing with respect to a nonnegative cone was posed for the application of vector Lyapunov functions in 1974. Necessary conditions were given in 1980, which were based on the spectrum and the first eigenvector. This dissertation gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the case of the real spectrum when the first eigenvector is in the nonnegative orthant, and when the first eigenvector is in the boundary of the nonnegative orthant, it gives conditions based on the reducibility of the matrix. For the complex spectrum, in the presence of a positive first eigenvector the problem is shown to be equivalent to the irreducible nonnegative inverse eigenvalue problem

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http://archive.org/details/onquasimonotonic109458768

Major, United States Army