Simone A. Wegge is Professor of Economics at the College of Staten Island, a part of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is also a member of the doctoral faculty of the Economics Ph.D. program at the Graduate Center – CUNY as well as an affiliate member of the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research. Presently she chairs the Department of Economics in the Chazanoff School of Business at the College of Staten Island, which offers BA and BS degrees in economics. She teaches introductory micro and macro, statistics, econometrics, and economic and business history. Her goal as a teacher and mentor is to foster joy and interest in economics and to encourage students to think for themselves.
Her research focuses on business and economic history, specifically migration to the U.S. in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, the savings of Irish immigrants in 1850s New York City, land inequality and inheritance institutions in mid-19th century Germany. Her work has been published in leading economic history and history journals including the Journal of Economic History, the American Historical Review, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Explorations in Economic History, the European Review of Economic History, Social Science History, and Historical Methods. In 2002 the International Economic History Association awarded her Ph.D. thesis a Dissertation Prize for Best Doctoral Research. Her work has been supported financially by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Economic History Association, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).