Economic Theory Commons^™

Three Essays In Applied Microeconomics: Philly Style, Alexander Christian Marsella

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

My dissertation analyzes several contemporary policy-based and institutional occurrences in an urban setting to help guide further advancements in reducing violence, drug overdose deaths, and other unhealthy behaviors that city governments look to curb. Several recent developments in Philadelphia offer a promising setting for studying policies that have broad implications.

Chapter 1 examines the effect of the West Philadelphia Promise Zone initiative on violent crime rates in a high-crime area of West Philadelphia, where a series of educational, public-safety, and quality-of-life improvement grants were disbursed from 2014 onward. My difference-in-differences analysis with two-way fixed effects and cluster bootstrapped standard errors …

Non-Monetary Economies: A Study On Different Governing Principles, Richard Perry Vest Ii

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis examines a new economic system with a focus on non-monetary (primarily automation) aspects. Currency has been used in exchange for goods and services and this exchange has often resulted in benefits gained by any given individual. What if that wasn’t the case? How might society function if it was not influenced by currency? This thesis explores this hypothetical concept of an economy without currency with a focus given to automation. Using utility and production functions, discussion is given on how supply and demand functions behave in a non-monetary economy, how governing policy could be handled, and how society …