Professor Keith Bender specialises in applied microeconomics, particularly labour economics. Early in his career he focused on the role of institutions and labour market outcomes, looking at differences between union and nonunion workers, public and private sector workers, and the subjective wellbeing of retirees and retirement behaviour. More recently he has been looking at the interactions of health and labour economics, particularly the effect of different kinds of labour contracts on stress and the health of workers. He has also done research on educational and skills mismatch in the labour market, examining its incidence, causes and effects, particularly among the very highly educated. He is a Co-Director of the University's Just Transition Lab, an interdisciplinary research centre examining transitions (such as the energy transition in the North East of Scotland) and how they impact communities and regions.

He is an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Industrial Relations and a Research Fellow of the IZA. In addition to working at the University of Aberdeen, he has held previous positions at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the US Social Security Administration, as well as visiting positions at Louisiana State University, University of Potsdam, Giessen University and the National Institute for Labour Studies at Flinders University in Australia.