Morris M. Kleiner is professor and AFL-CIO Chair in Labor Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He also teaches at the University's Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies. He has received many teaching awards including University and school-wide ones for classes in public affairs, business, and economics. He has served as an expert on labor issues to government, labor, nonprofits, and business.

Kleiner’s research interests include the analysis of institutions in the labor market, the influence of labor-management policies on organizations, and the role of labor unions in democratic societies. He has published extensively in the top academic journals in economics, labor and industrial relations, and is the author, co-author, or co-editor of nine books.

Kleiner is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been a professor at the University of Kansas, an associate in employment policy at the Brookings Institution, a visiting scholar in the Harvard University economics department, a visiting researcher in the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University, a visiting scholar at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a visiting scholar at the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at West Virginia University, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a senior scholar in the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and a visiting professor and research fellow at the London School of Economics. He is currently serving as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

In 2018 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for work in industrial relations from the Labor and Employment Relations Association. He received his doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Public policies on work and pay; role of labor unions in democratic societies; human resource policies and organizational performance