Why is the employment effect of the minimum wage frequently found to be close to zero? Theory tells us that when wages are below marginal productivity, as with monopsony, employers are able to increase wages without laying off workers, but systematic evidence directly supporting this explanation...

The Great Recession has renewed interest in unemployment insurance (UI) programs around the world. At the same time, there have been important advances in both theory and measurement of UI. In this review, we first use the theory to present a unified treatment of the welfare effects of UI...