Laurens is a Professor of Economics at KU Leuven. He is also affiliated with CentER at Tilburg University, the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London, and CEPR. He specializes in household and family economics, labor economics, and applied microeconometrics, with a particular focus on revealed preference methods and household consumption decisions. His recent work studies intra-household allocation, child welfare, marriage markets, labor market participation, and individual welfare within families.