Matthew E. Kahn is the Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. He has taught at Columbia, Tufts, UCLA and Johns Hopkins University He has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard and Stanford University. He is the author of seven books including; Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment (Brookings Institution Press 2006) and the co-author of Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton University Press 2008). He is the author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter World (Basic Books 2010). His research areas include; environmental, urban, energy and real estate economics.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2013.