Lisa Kahn

Professor Kahn is the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences and a Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on labor economics with interests in organizations and education. Her most recent work examines the impact of COVID-19 on the labor market. In other ongoing work, she evaluates public-private workforce development programs and whether they help to bridge the skills gap. In her previous work, she has examined how the Great Recession accelerated the adoption of labor-replacing technologies, exacerbating polarization of the U.S. economy. In previous work, she examined the consequences of graduating from college in an economic downturn, finding surprisingly long-lasting, negative wage effects. That paper won the award for the best paper published in Labour economics in 2010/11.

She was previously an associate professor of economics at Yale School of Management. From 2010 to 2011 Kahn served on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers as the senior economist for labor and education policy. She has also been a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution and is currently a Research Associate at NBER and an IZA Research Fellow. She is currently on the executive board for the Society of Labor Economists. She holds an A.B. in economics from the University of Chicago (2003) and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (2008).