Abstract The class of quasi-chain graphs is an extension of the well-studied class of chain graphs. This latter class enjoys many nice and important properties, such as bounded clique-width, implicit representation, well-quasi-ordering by induced subgraphs, etc. The class of quasi-chain graphs is substantially more complex. In particular, this class is not well-quasi-ordered by induced subgraphs, and the clique-width is not bounded in it. In the present paper, we show that the universe of quasi-chain graphs is at least as complex as the universe of permutations by establishing a bijection between the class of all permutations and a subclass of quasi-chain graphs. This implies, in particular, that the induced subgraph isomorphism problem is NP-complete for quasi-chain graphs. On the other hand, we propose a decomposition theorem for quasi-chain graphs that implies an implicit representation for graphs in this class and efficient solutions for some algorithmic problems that are generally intractable.

The paper [J. Balogh, B. Bollobás, D. Weinreich, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 95 (2005), pp. 29--48] identifies a jump in the speed of hereditary graph properties to the Bell number $B_n$ and provides a partial characterization of the family of minimal classes whose speed is at least $B_n$. In the present paper, we give a complete characterization of this family. Since this family is infinite, the decidability of the problem of determining if the speed of a hereditary property is above or below the Bell number is questionable. We answer this question positively by showing that there exists an algorithm which, given a finite set $\mathcal{F}$ of graphs, decides whether the speed of the class of graphs containing no induced subgraphs from the set $\mathcal{F}$ is above or below the Bell number. For properties defined by infinitely many minimal forbidden induced subgraphs, the speed is known to be above the Bell number.