John Kennes is an Associate Professor at Aarhus Universitet. He is canadian citizen who has lived and worked in Denmark since 2001. He researches the theory of directed search where agents choose actions to overcome problems of coordination and exchange. The agenda is to figure out what actions are important and to theorize why. This research considers a number of basic problems related to the operation of households, such as the matching of workers to firms, men to women, schools to children, and borrowers to lenders. This research also considers policy questions related to third party intermediation, such as the design of assignment mechanisms, reputation systems, government transfer programs, and over-the-counter markets. He is presently engaged in two large, externally funded projects (by the Danish Council for Independent Research) to figure out how children contribute to the marriage prospects of unwed mothers, and how the assignment rules to public daycares in Denmark affect the welfare of children and the career opportunities of their parents.

Kennes received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Western Ontario in 1996.