Karsten Kohn works in the economics department of KfW, KfW Research, where he is heading a team focusing on energy, environment, and municipality topics. He studied Economics at the universities of Kiel, Urbana-Champaign, Mannheim, and Frankfurt. He received his Ph.D. from Goethe University Frankfurt in the year 2007.

His main research interests are in entrepreneurship, labor economics, climate and the environment, and applied econometrics.

He joined IZA as Research Affiliate in the year 2005 and became Research Fellow in 2008.