Lawrence M. Kahn is the Braunstein Family Professor and Professor of Economics at Cornell University, a Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Studies/Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich, Germany, and a Research Fellow of the National Centre for Econometric Research (Australia), Sportometrics Program. He is an elected Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. He was the Chair of the Labor Economics Department at Cornell from 1998-99 and 2000-2005, is Editor of the Industrial & Labor Relations Review , was from 2007-2010 a Specialized Co-Editor (Sports Economics) of Economic Inquiry , and was from 1994 to 2011 Associate Editor of the Industrial & Labor Relations Review. Before joining the Cornell faculty in 1994, he was a Professor of Economics and Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois. He has served as Visiting Fellow in the Economics Department of Princeton University, Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, Visiting Scholar at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Visiting Scholar at the Office of Labour Market Policy Evaluation in Uppsala, Sweden, and Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He has also served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Women's Employment and Related Social Issues.

Professor Kahn's research interests include international differences in labor market institutions and labor market outcomes such as wage inequality, unemployment, and the gender pay gap. In addition, he has had a long term interest in sports labor markets and is currently also conducting research on immigration and the labor market.

He has published articles in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, International Economic Review, Economic Journal, Economica, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Labor Economics. His book At Home and Abroad: U.S. Labor Market Performance in International Perspective (with Francine D. Blau), published by the Russell Sage Foundation, won the Richard A. Lester Prize, awarded by the Princeton University Industrial Relations Section for the Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations published in 2002. His biography appears in the 2003 edition of Who's Who in Economics.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2004.