John Friedman told the Brown Daily Herald that the new Watson School of International and Public Affairs aims to elevate Brown’s global policy presence by fostering interdisciplinary study, expanding faculty, and relaunching its MPA program.
Read Article
John N. Friedman
Vascellaro Family Dean, The Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs, Briger Family Distinguished Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs
Dean's Suite, 111 Thayer Street
Research Interests
Inequality & Poverty, International Institutions, Political Economy, Race, Identity & Ethnicity, Social Movements, Urban Policies & Politics, Urbanization
Areas of Interest
Public Economics and Political Economy
Biography
John N. Friedman is the inaugural Vascellaro Family Dean of the Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and the Briger Family Distinguished Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs.
Dean Friedman is a founding co-director of Opportunity Insights. His work is rooted in big-data analysis, with a focus on topics like inequality, poverty, education, and tax policy.
A pathbreaking scholar of inequality and social mobility, some of his earliest work focused on the long-term effects of education. One prominent paper showed that an excellent 6th-grade teacher can increase the lifetime earnings of a single class of students by nearly $1.5 million, a finding that was cited by President Obama in his 2012 State of the Union Address. In 2020, Friedman and the Opportunity Insights team created the Economic Tracker, harnessing private-sector data to produce timely and localized statistics on economic activity. The tool helped guide federal, state, and local governments through the depths of the COVID-19 economic crisis.
Most recently, Friedman has focused on upward mobility in higher education, writing on how admissions policies could increase social mobility at the nation’s most selective private universities and assessing the value of standardized testing in admissions. His work has been published in leading journals and featured in major media outlets, including front-page coverage in The New York Times.
Friedman is also a co-editor of the American Economic Review, the flagship publication of the economics profession. He served on the Treasury Advisory Council on Racial Equity and is president‑elect of the Eastern Economic Association. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and previously served on the Rhode Island Council of Economic Advisors. Earlier in his tenure at Brown, he served as Chair of the Economics Department (2021–2024).
Before joining Brown’s faculty in 2015, Friedman served as an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School (2009–2014) and as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House’s National Economic Council during the Obama administration (2013–2014). He earned his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Research
Friedman's research brings together theory and data, harnessing the power of large administrative datasets to yield policy-relevant insights on a wide range of topics, including taxation, healthcare, and education quality. His work has appeared in top academic journals as well as in major media outlets.
Publications
"Diversifying Societies Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admissions to Highly Selective Private Colleges joint with Raj Chetty, John Friedman and David J. Deming, July 2023
Real-time economics: A new platform to track the impacts of COVID-19 on people, businesses, and communities using private sector data NBER Working paper (2020)
The opportunity atlas: Mapping the childhood roots of social mobility National Bureau of Economic Research (2018)
The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility NBER (2018)
Teaching
ECON 1000, ECON 0180A, MPA 2455, ECON 2485, ECON 2930
Recent News
John Friedman told The New York Times that the College Board’s decision to discontinue its tool identifying promising high school students from disadvantaged neighborhoods and schools could limit opportunities for those students.
Read Article
John Friedman told the GW Hatchet, "In other words, a given test score predicts the same level of academic performance, even when students come from very different backgrounds."
Read Article
John Friedman told The New York Times, "If you’re just trying to admit the students who were most academically prepared, you would in fact end up tilting a lot toward white students and toward richer students, because those are the ones who have had access to the schools that would get them prepared."
Read Article
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Interview with Brown economist: What about the American dream, Mr. Friedman? (interview with John Friedman)
John Friedman told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the American Dream has weakened, with children today having only about a 50 percent chance of surpassing their parents’ standard of living due to uneven economic growth and declining social mobility.
Read Article
In a recent Bloomberg Opinion article, John Friedman noted that the data confirm a measurable decline in economic opportunity for white working‑class communities.
Read Article