Boston College Economics Department

Officially Dr. Pellegrini 🎓 One of the proudest moments of my life. As a first-generation college student, this milestone means so much. We don't talk enough about how hard it is to navigate academia without a roadmap. I'm forever grateful to everyone who helped me get here 🙏

Cool new @nberpubs WP by @demirermert, Musolff, Yang (2026): Writing Code vs. Shipping Code: Productivity Effects Across Generations of AI Coding Tools 🔧 Study AI productivity effects in the context of software development by combining public GitHub data with internal Microsoft telemetry. 💡Key finding: AI’s large productivity effects at the task level attenuate substantially when moving to higher-level outcomes such as actual releases. 👉 Interpretation: “Weak links,” and specifically human bottlenecks at later stages (reviewing pull requests, launching apps, ...), attenuate task-level productivity gains.

🔗 nber.org/papers/w35275

U.S. defense needs more competition, not more money, writes Assistant Professor of the Practice in Economics Peter Devine, co-author of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. wsj.com/opinion/u-s-de…

Congrats to our newest Ph.D @YunuSemih

Professor Tracy Regan was honored at the 2026 Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony held on May 17 with the ’Teacher of the Year Award.’

Yunus Semih Coskun will publicly defend his dissertation “Essays in Applied Microeconomics” on Tuesday, May 26, 2026 from 10:00AM-10:45AM in Maloney Hall 313.

Edson Severnini has been appointed a Research Fellow at CESifo, the global, independent research network based in Germany with members from across the world.

Congratulations to Economics Professor of the Practice Tracy Regan on receiving the Boston College Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award!

Geoffrey Sanzenbacher spoke to Kurtis Lee of the New York Times about how many people "unretire" in a given year, why they might do it, and what role the rising cost of living plays. nytimes.com/2026/05/08/bus…

Congrats to our newest Ph.D @gezerfatih123

Congrats to our newest Ph.D Yu Sugisaki!

Congrats to our newest Ph.D Ryo Tsukamoto!

Fatih Gezer will publicly defend his dissertation “Essays in Market Design” on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 from 10:00AM-11:30AM in Maloney Hall 330.

Yu Sugisaki will publicly defend his dissertation “Essays in Macroeconomics” on Tuesday, May 5, 2026 from 1:00PM-3:00PM in Maloney Hall 313.

A supernerdy thing regarding the recent PSG-BM game and what it means: Sen (weighted Gini welfare) welfare function of European leagues vs weighted by game number coefficient of each league using ELO (via Claude, data: clubelo.com)

Ryo Tsukamoto will publicly defend his dissertation “Essays in Microeconomics” on Monday, May 4, 2026 from 11:00AM-12:00PM in Maloney Hall 313.

Join us for this event! WHAT TO EXPECT FROM SHIPPING DECARBONIZATION? INSIGHTS FROM THE UN-IMO NEGOTIATIONS May 4, 2026 | 11:45am-1:15pm Schiller Institute Convening Space Room 501, 245 Beacon St Register to attend : docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

Congrats to our newest Ph.D Ira Lilian Abraham!

Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting my JMP at @bc_econ 2nd PhD Conf. I greatly enjoyed the inspiring keynote lecture by Prof. James E. Anderson and appreciated his feedback on my work. Thanks to the organisers and all participants for making it such a great conference!