Monotonicity and convergence in chemical reaction networks

In this note we discuss monotonicity and convergence to equilibria of certain classes -to be specified below- of chemical reaction networks. The results do not assume any particular form for the kinetics of the reactions (such as mass action kinetics) and only rely on stoichiometric constraints. They imply in particular that the Zero Deficiency Theorem -which does assume mass action kinetics- remains valid for a more general class of networks. This suggests a robustness property of this classical result.