Kirchoff's current law states that the current in every point in a series circuit is the same.
In the case of a transistor in common emitter configuration, you can take advantage of that fact and state that the collector current is equal to the emitter current. The truth is somewhat different, because the gain of the transistor is not infinity, so the base current must be added to the emitter current. With a reasonably high gain, however, you can ignore the base current.
Consider that the emitter voltage is related to the base voltage by the forward drop of the base-emitter junction, about 0.7 volts, and the collector and emitter currents are the same. Now look at the collector and emitter resistors. If the currents are the same, and the voltage across the emitter resistor is known, then you know the voltage across the collector resistor as well. This is an application of both Kirchoff's and Ohm's laws.
The gain, then, of this amplifer is collector resistance divided by emitter resistance. It is an inverting amplier in this configuration. In some configurations, the emitter resistor is zero ohms. This does not mean the gain is infinity - it now means that the gain is limited by the gain of the transistor, which it is anyway - the emitter resistor is used to stabilize the gain and reduce dependency on individual transistor gains, which do vary.