He is also the current holder of the Robert D. O'Brien Chair of Business for 2018-2020. Pörtner previously taught at the University of Washington, Brown University, and Georgetown University, and has worked as a consultant for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and Ghana. His research interests include household and population economics, development, and labor. Pörtner has published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Demography, Journal of Development Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Population Economics, Review of Economics of the Household, and the Journal of African Economies. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on development and population issues, quantitative methods, and microeconomics.