The 5th installment of the Village Market Simulator series is now online! You can find it on

YouTube or in the 'Simulations' section of our

MOOC.

This episode goes through the basic premises of community currencies and how they affect economies. The simulator takes an agent based approach to simulating basic economic intereactions with two currencies. Field surveys from (7) locations across Kenya and South Africa suggest that the fragility of local markets due to exogenous market conditions gives rise to volatile local markets that result in chronic seasonal illiquidity and local market stagnation. Further data suggests that endogenous sources of liquidity through circulating vouchers refered to as Community Currency (CC) can counteract these seasonal trends and increase overall trade volume.

What is especially exciting about this one is that it will be available in Github and you can play with all the bells and whistles, and experiment by yourself how changing different variables affect trade within the village.

Make sure you have python running on your computer and have fun with the code!