We infer the employment response to a minimum wage change by calibrating a model of employment for the restaurant industry. Whereas perfect competition implies that employment falls and prices rise after a minimum wage increase, the monopsony model potentially implies the opposite. We show that estimated price responses are consistent with the competitive model. We place fairly tight bounds on the employment response, with the most plausible parameter values suggesting that a 10% increase in the minimum wage lowers low‐skill employment by 2%–4% and total restaurant employment by 1%–3%.

We estimate the importance of teachers in Chicago public high schools using matched student-teacher administrative data. A one standard deviation, one semester improvement in math teacher quality raises student math scores by 0.13 grade equivalents or, over 1 year, roughly one-fifth of average yearly gains. Estimates are relatively stable over time, reasonably impervious to a variety of conditioning variables, and do not appear to be driven by classroom sorting or selective score reporting. Also, teacher quality is particularly important for lower-ability students. Finally, traditional human capital measures—including those determining compensation—explain little of the variation in estimated quality.