The fertility behavior differential

The present paper is devoted to presenting a parsimonious, simplified and heuristic method of gathering data concerning concepts of fertility behavior and control. The nature of the instrument is such that it also facilitates cross-cultural comparison and generalization. The method employs the female fecundity period as a standard for data gathering. Its main uses are to gather (a) primary information on actual, expected, intended and ideal fertility behavior practice; and (b) secondary information on knowledge about and attitudes towards methods and practices of fertility control based upon an analyses of the primary information. The measurement device calls for more active participation by the respondent in the interview situation. The actual measurement device is mounted on a soft board and respondents answer questions by sticking appropriately coded mapping pins into the relevant places on the Fertility Behavior Differential. In this way, information is efficiently gathered on such issues as the outset of menstruation and menopause, the actual parental ages at marriage and at present, the actual birth order of all children up till the present time, differentiating between miscarriages and births of male and female children both living and dead, the expected birth order of further children, the intended birth order of further children if perfect fertility control were possible, the ideal parental ages at marriage and ideal birth order of children assuming that the respondent could go back to square one and start all over again. The measuring device is not restricted to women in there fecundity period. It may be extended to use responses of males and females of all ages, barring infants. In addition, the measurement method ameliorates problems of jargonistic terminology and the use of "sensitive" words and language

Marketing farm supplies in rural areas: a study of farm inputs availability in Totu division

The present study presents the results and recommendations stemming from a baseline survey on the nature of marketing farm supplies in Totu Division, Nyori District. The survey was conducted among retail traders in the Division early this year. It was concerned with determining the degree to which crucial farm inputs were available in Division, especially deep within the rural areas. It focussed particularly upon the availability and distribution of those inputs necessary for effective hybrid maize husbandry as an example, paying special attention to the need for repackaging these inputs in smaller quantities and for relabeling them with more meaningful terminology. Other issues investigated include determining the accuracy with which stockists estimate the seasonal purchasing needs of their clients and the degree to which main supplies are engaged in delivering inputs to stockists. Since the present study is a concomitant of the parent study, the Totu Extension Pilot Project, recommendations are cast in the light of this parent study. Thus, the study concludes that the problem of farm supplies in Totu Division may be summarized as undersupply in some areas part of the time, and non-supply in other areas most of the time. This problem is made worse by packaging of some supplies which is too bulky for the needs of many farmers arid package labelling which is product rather than use oriented. One way of overcoming these problems is by extending loans from commercial banking sources to farm supply stockists to enable them to carry a comprehensive and adequate shopping list of supplies. To ensure a steady market and increase predictability of demand, however, the programme should be closely connected with the Totu Extension Pilot Project which is currently experimenting with extending farm input loans to trainee farmers. These loans could be extended as vouchers redeemable in farm supplies from stockists and repayments made into a revolving fund which, in time, might well evolve into a farmer’s credit union

Accelerating the flow of new ideas to rural people, a proposal for a pilot extension training project in Nyeri

The present paper is subdivided in three sections. In the first section, an overview of the development of the Special Rural Development Programme, from its inception at the 1965 Kericho Conference, to the present time, is presented. In the second section, we focus our attention specifically upon the Tetu Division SEDP. We describe our rationale, methods of research design and major findings of the Tetu Extension Pilot Project baseline survey conducted in 1970. The final section is devoted to a proposal outlining an experimental strategy for increasing rural incomes via the acceleration of the flow of income-generating ideas and practices to small scale farmers

Two-Stage Exchange: Extending a Model of Decentralised Bi-lateral Exchange for a Limited Model of Labour, Profit, and Endogenous Production

When a private transaction takes place without publically observable prices, how might that information leak into the public domain and coordinate demand and supply sides of the economy? The Walrasian model of general equilibrium addresses this question by assuming it away, introducing the assumption of a "Walrasian auctioneer" who calls out price vectors that enable all consumers and producers to make consumption and production plans based on universal and costlessly observable relative prices of all goods. Violations of the Law of One Price are commonly observable in the real world even across major chain grocery stores that actively advertise some of their price offers. Gintis' (2006) "The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bi-lateral Exchange" highlighted the importance of this question of how stable prices could emerge from initially private bi-lateral exchange. Gintis used agent-based simulation to model a barter economy with exogenous production. In this thesis, we attempt to replicate Gintis' model with an extension that includes simple labour markets and endogenous production. In Gintis' model, identical goods can trade at different prices that are determined by private bilateral negotiation, violating the so-called Law of One Price. The empirical probability distributions of private prices follow an "adaptive evolutionary dynamic" in which high-scoring agents imitate low-scoring agents. Through evolutionary adaption modeled by cumulative utility scores which serve as a fitness function, these random distributions of private prices become quasi-public and eventually achieve Walrasian equilibrium (i.e. a price vector at which all goods markets simultaneously clear). Our extension of Gintis' (2006) model introduces household and producer agents engaged in two-stage exchange in each period. We assume that households make decisions about whether to sell labour which is required by producers when they make production decisions. By augmenting Gintis' barter-exchange economy with labour markets, the model embeds a new constraint on producers' ability to produce, and the resulting model features endogenous consumption, production and prices. To keep the model as simple as possible while incorporating endogenous production, we treat production and exchange as binary events. Output and labour are assumed to be homogenous with no quantity variation to focus solely on whether Walrasian pricing can be achieved once production is endognized. By adapting the same evolutionary mechanisms from Gintis (2006) we replicate one of his findings and fail to replicate the other. Under a variety of model specifications, our model replicates the shift from private to quasipublic prices to achieve model stability in the presence of a modified Leontief utility function for households and a simple profit function for producers. Unlike Gintis (2006), however, the stable price vectors that emerge in our model with endogenous production diverge from general equilibrium pricing. Thus, Gintis' result that Walrasian equilibrium can arise in a decentralized economy with bi-lateral trade does not appear to be robust to generalization with endogenous production

Two-Stage Exchange: Extending a Model of Decentralised Bi-lateral Exchange for a Limited Model of Labour, Profit, and Endogenous Production

When a private transaction takes place without publically observable prices, how might that information leak into the public domain and coordinate demand and supply sides of the economy? The Walrasian model of general equilibrium addresses this question by assuming it away, introducing the assumption of a "Walrasian auctioneer" who calls out price vectors that enable all consumers and producers to make consumption and production plans based on universal and costlessly observable relative prices of all goods. Violations of the Law of One Price are commonly observable in the real world even across major chain grocery stores that actively advertise some of their price offers. Gintis' (2006) "The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bi-lateral Exchange" highlighted the importance of this question of how stable prices could emerge from initially private bi-lateral exchange. Gintis used agent-based simulation to model a barter economy with exogenous production. In this thesis, we attempt to replicate Gintis' model with an extension that includes simple labour markets and endogenous production. In Gintis' model, identical goods can trade at different prices that are determined by private bilateral negotiation, violating the so-called Law of One Price. The empirical probability distributions of private prices follow an "adaptive evolutionary dynamic" in which high-scoring agents imitate low-scoring agents. Through evolutionary adaption modeled by cumulative utility scores which serve as a fitness function, these random distributions of private prices become quasi-public and eventually achieve Walrasian equilibrium (i.e. a price vector at which all goods markets simultaneously clear). Our extension of Gintis' (2006) model introduces household and producer agents engaged in two-stage exchange in each period. We assume that households make decisions about whether to sell labour which is required by producers when they make production decisions. By augmenting Gintis' barter-exchange economy with labour markets, the model embeds a new constraint on producers' ability to produce, and the resulting model features endogenous consumption, production and prices. To keep the model as simple as possible while incorporating endogenous production, we treat production and exchange as binary events. Output and labour are assumed to be homogenous with no quantity variation to focus solely on whether Walrasian pricing can be achieved once production is endognized. By adapting the same evolutionary mechanisms from Gintis (2006) we replicate one of his findings and fail to replicate the other. Under a variety of model specifications, our model replicates the shift from private to quasipublic prices to achieve model stability in the presence of a modified Leontief utility function for households and a simple profit function for producers. Unlike Gintis (2006), however, the stable price vectors that emerge in our model with endogenous production diverge from general equilibrium pricing. Thus, Gintis' result that Walrasian equilibrium can arise in a decentralized economy with bi-lateral trade does not appear to be robust to generalization with endogenous production

Participatory communication : working for change and development

Based on a conference held Feb. 1989 in Pune, IndiaDue to copyright restrictions, this item cannot be share