Today's digital economy is blurring the boundaries between computer science and economics -- in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and increasingly on university campuses. Yale undergraduates interested in both fields can pursue the Computer Science and Economics (CSEC) interdepartmental degree program, which launched in fall 2019, with coursework covering topics such as machine learning and computational finance. Philipp Strack, CSEC's inaugural director of undergraduate studies, is comfortable straddling multiple disciplines. With an academic background in economics and mathematics, his research reflects this broad and interdisciplinary outlook -- ranging from behavioral economics and neuroscience to auction design, market design, optimization, and pure probability theory. Strack, an associate professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently spoke to YaleNews about the real-world implications of this work, what the CSEC program offers students, and how it bridges these critical fields.

Technology is driving major shifts in the job market, and that will require corporations, governments, and individuals to embrace new strategies, according to a new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Burning Glass Technologies, What's Trending in Jobs and Skills, being released today. BCG and Burning Glass, a leading provider of real-time labor market information, studied 95 million online job listings in the US from 2015 through 2018. The authors analyzed the number and growth rate of job listings and skill requirements across broad sectors and within hundreds of specific job areas, as classified by the US Labor Department's O*NET occupation system. Through this analysis, the report identifies the fastest-growing jobs and the fastest-growing skills in the job market. "No other job market study to date has been as statistically extensive or exhaustive," says Rainer Strack, managing director and senior partner at BCG and a coauthor of the report.