Alex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Houston and a master's degree in Physics from Odesa National University in Ukraine. Before joining Lehigh's faculty, Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy served as an assistant professor at the University of Memphis, where he taught graduate Macroeconomics and Econometrics, and researched monetary policy analysis.
Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy's papers have been published in the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and the International Journal of Forecasting. He has been the recipient of several research grants and his research has been referred to at the U.S. Congress.