Nicholas Pates

Professional Profile

Nick was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota and received his bachelor’s degree at Minnesota State University Moorhead in economics with minors in mathematics and finance in the Spring of 2011. During his time as an undergraduate he took part in a study abroad for a semester at the University of Portsmouth in Portsmouth, England and took an additional semester off to serve as a Washington DC intern in the office of Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND).

Following his undergraduate education, he attended Iowa State University and received a Master’s of Science degree in economics in 2013. At Iowa State he studied under Dr. Georgeanne Artz and conducted work in applied economics including feasibility studies for broiler breeding flocks in the state and on optimal expansion strategies for fruit and vegetable producers.

In the December of 2018 he received his doctoral degree in agricultural economics and joined the University of Kentucky’s Department of Agricultural Economics as a postdoctoral researcher the following January. At Kansas State he worked under Dr. Nathan Hendricks and received the department’s 2018 Outstanding PhD Dissertation award.

Nick joined the faculty in AEC in July 2020. He specializes in production agriculture and efficiency and their interactions with policy and the environment. Much of his recent research studies intensive and extensive land-use response by row crop producers and utilizes large national datasets to explore issues of heterogenous response and causality in crop supply studies. Nick primarily studies land valuation, issues in hemp production, and yield response.