John Friedman
Friedman earned an A.B., A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. His research interests include public economics and political economy. Friedman was previously an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and served as a Special Assistant to President Obama for Economic Policy within the White House National Economic Council in 2013–2014. He became editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Public Economics" in 2019. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Friedman co-led a group that developed an economic tracker, the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker. This presented private-sector data on economic trends more frequently and more rapidly than officially published economic statistics. Friedman is married to Hilary Levy Friedman, a visiting assistant professor of education at Brown. The couple met in the fall of 2002 while they were completing fellowships at the University of Cambridge. They have two sons.
Career
He additionally co-directs Opportunity Insights and is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.