The potential welfare benefits of unemployment insurance, along with the optimal replacement ratio, are studied using a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model. To provide a role for unemployment insurance, agents in our economy face exogenous idiosyncratic employment shocks and are unable to borrow or insure themselves through private markets. In the absence of moral hazard, replacement ratios as high as .65 are optimal and the welfare benefits of unemployment insurance are quite large. However, if there is moral hazard and the replacement ratio is not set optimally, but is instead set to an empirically plausible value, the economy can be much worse off than it would be without unemployment insurance.

A unified growth theory is developed that accounts for the roughly constant living standards displayed by world economies prior to 1800 as well as the growing living standards exhibited by modern industrial economies. Our theory also explains the industrial revolution, which is the transition from an era when per capita incomes are stagnant to one with sustained growth. This transition is inevitable given positive rates of total factor productivity growth. We use a standard growth model with one good and two available technologies. The first, denoted the capital as inputs. The second, denoted the does not require land. We show that in the early stages of development, only the Malthus technology is used and, due to population growth, living standards are stagnant despite technological progress. Eventually, technological progress causes the Solow technology to become profitable and both technologies are employed. At this point, living standards improve since population growth has less influence on per capita income growth. In the limit, the economy behaves like a standard Solow growth model.