John Kennan is a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. He has served as a co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and as a member of the board of editors of the American Economic Review. Kennan's research has focused largely on bargaining (with applications to labor negotiations and to monetary theory) and on cyclical employment and wage fluctuations; recently he has also worked on migration.

Kennan received his BA in mathematics and economics from University College Dublin in 1968, and his PhD in economics from Northwestern University in 1973. He was an Assistant Professor at Brown University from 1972 until 1980, and an Associate and Full Professor at the University of Iowa from 1980 until he moved to the University of Wisconsin in 1992.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in February 2011.