Unplanned pregnancies halt women’s career progression and result in income losses of 20% five years after an initial contraceptive failure. The detrimental effects of unplanned children are larger for younger women and women enrolled in education. In contrast, planned children have minimal impacts on women’s labor market outcomes.

Lagging US productivity growth since the 1970s, despite the rapid pace of innovation in information and communications technologies (ICT) and electronics, is explained in part from an unbalanced sectoral distribution of innovation; that is, technological advances over the last several decades have been unbalanced across sectors and have created endogenous bottlenecks, holding back aggregate productivity.

Matching U.S. Army officers to units using deferred acceptance reduced attrition in their first year by 16.7%, but this effect faded in the second year. Matching with deferred acceptance had no impact on performance. Communication and coordination of preferences may limit the benefits of deferred acceptance in some matching markets.