Michael A. Clemens is a professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2023. He studies the economic causes and effects of migration all over the world.

For 20 years prior he built the research program on international migration at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. He is also affiliated with the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany; the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration in the department of economics at University College London; and the Center for Global Development.