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Nicole Simpson
W. Bradford Wiley Professor of International Economics; Chair, Department of Economics
Department/Office Information
EconomicsNicole B. Simpson is the W Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics at Colgate University and is the current Department Chair. She holds a BA in Economics from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Iowa. She has been at Colgate University since 2001. Between 2011-2012, she was named the Gretchen Hoadley Burke ’81 Endowed Chair in Regional Studies at Colgate. Nicole is an associate editor at the Eastern Economic Journal. She is a research fellow at IZA and the GLO. Between 2014 and 2018, Simpson was the associate dean for international initiatives at Colgate.
Simpson is an economist who works on issues related to immigration, remittances, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and education. Her current work has focused on studying the determinants of immigration, the impact of the EITC on labor supply when households face credit constraints, and the relationship between credit and college investment. Her work has been published in the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Development Economics, American Economic Review, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Education and Contemporary Economic Policy. She published a textbook entitled the Economics of Immigration; the second edition was printed in 2020. She is currently an associate editor of the Eastern Economic Journal.
She teaches courses in immigration, macroeconomics, international economics, and poverty. Simpson coordinate the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program at Colgate, where students file income taxes for local low-income households. She was the faculty director for the London Economics Study Group in 2007, 2011 and 2022 and directed an extended study trip to Argentina with the Benton Scholars in May 2013. She also taught a Sophomore Residential Seminar in 2019-20 which traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border. Professor Simpson also coordinated the first Fed Challenge team at Colgate in 2013 and has led the program in 2023 and 2024.