Estimating Joint Distributions of Markov Chains

Suppose we observe a stationary Markov chain with unknown transition distribution. The empirical estimator for the expectation of a function of two successive observations is known to be efficient. For reversible Markov chains, an appropriate symmetrization is efficient. For functions of more than two arguments, these estimators cease to be efficient. We determine the influence function of efficient estimators of expectations of functions of several observations, both for completely unknown and for reversible Markov chains. We construct simple efficient estimators in both cases.