Inflationary Trend in Basic Amenities in Ibadan Oyo State, Nigeria using Price Indices

Trend of inflation was studied using price indices gotten from market survey conducted on the prices of food, clothes and building materials collected from major  markets in Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria in 2004 and 2014, 2004 being the base year. The price indices used were Laspeyres’, Paache’s, Fisher’s Ideal (FI) and Dorbey’s and Bowley’s (DB) with emphasis on Fisher’s and DB because of their advantages over others. A well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data on prices of food, clothes and building materials in these markets in 2004 and 2014. The results showed an increase between 40.27 and 460.26% increase in the prices of food items; an increase between 13.93 and 84.04% in the price of food items (provisions) except custard with a reduction of 15%; an increase between 11.2 and 100% in prices of cloths except ankara with less than 8% reduction in price and an increase between 5.9 and 69.7% in the price of building materials. Since price change affects planning, especially when citizen are face with stable income, efforts must be made by relevant authorities to control and stabilize the prices of these commodities. Keywords: Inflation, Basic amenities, Market survey, Price indices, Ibada

On The Efficiency of Some Techniques For Optimum Allocation In Multivariate Stratified Survey.

In multivariate stratified sampling, the major concern is on the problem of estimation of more than one population characteristics which often make conflicting demands on sampling technique. In this type of survey, an allocation which is optimum for one characteristic may not be optimum for other characteristics. In such situations a compromise criterion is needed to work out a usable allocation which is optimum for all characteristics in some sense. This study is focuses on the efficiency of some techniques for optimum sample allocation which are Yates/Chatterjee, Booth and Sedransk and Vector maximum criterion (VMC) on the set of real life data stratified into six strata and two variates with desired variances using: (i) method of minimum variance with fixed sample size and (ii) an arbitrary fixing of variances. The stratum sample sizes  among the classes were obtained to examine the criterion that will produce the smallest n. In this paper, it was discovered that VMC and Booth and Sedransk are superior to Yates/Chatterjee. Even though, no universal conclusion can be drawn, the work clearly brings out the fact that the best allocation is not always obvious and that sufficient care is necessary in the choice of allocation of the sample sizes to different strata with several items. Keywords:- Stratified Survey; Optimum Allocation; Vector Maximum Criterion (VMC); Yates/Chatterjee;Booth and Sedrans