Person: Friedman, Jed
Development Research Group, Development Economics, DEC
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Friedman, Jed, Friedman, Jed A
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Poverty, POV, Health, HEA
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Development Research Group
Development Economics, DEC
Development Economics, DEC
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Last updated:November 28, 2025
Jed Friedman
Lead Economist
Jed Friedman is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group (Poverty and Inequality Team) at the World Bank. His research interests include the measurement of wellbeing and poverty as well as the evaluation of health and social policies. Jed's current work involves investigating the effectiveness of health financing reforms in Kyrgyzstan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; the nutritional and development gains from early childhood investment programs in India and the Philippines; and the incorporation of new approaches to survey-based wellbeing measurement in Peru and Malawi. Jed holds a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.
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Publication Cash Is Queen: Local Economy Effects of Cash Transfers to Women in West Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-06) Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Gonzalez, Paula; Goldstein, Markus; Friedman, JedThis paper examines the direct and spillover effects of cash transfers paid in a rural and low-income setting. In the short run, an unconditional cash transfer program for ultra-poor households in Northern Nigeria led to a 12 percentage point increase in micro-enterprise formation for program recipients. Moreover, benefits continued to increase in magnitude after program cessation and also extended to nearby non-beneficiary households when compared to counterparts in other villages where no cash transfers were paid. One year after program cessation, beneficiary women increased their enterprise ownership rate by 20 percentage points, while the rate for non-beneficiary women increased by 13 percentage points. Both groups of households enjoyed higher consumption and food security, and shifted away from husband-centered toward joint intrahousehold decision-making. One mechanism for this growth spillover is a boost to aggregate demand for local goods, in part identified by the positive link between the (randomly determined) neighborhood density of cash transfer households and enterprise creation. The increase in local female entrepreneurial activity translates to a partial income multiplier of at least 0.32. Women face restrictive social norms around work in this context and the slack productive resource brought into activity by the cash transfer is female labor, specifically female-led entrepreneurship near the home.Publication A Framework for the Economic Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-04-19) Wilkinson, Thomas; Wang, Mengxiao; Friedman, Jed; Prestidge, MarelizeNumerous digital health interventions have been piloted in response to the health care challenges low- and middle-income countries face. Because the opportunity cost of investing in digital health interventions can be large, countries must make choices about which interventions to scale up. To make good investment decisions about digital health interventions, there is a need to define and establish their value, and to use economic evaluation to make informed decisions, however DHIs present methodological challenges for economic evaluation. To address these challenges, this paper first creates a ‘gap map’ of digital evidence which reveals a dearth of economic evaluation evidence about digital health interventions; this lack can limit decisions on policy, programming, and appropriate scale-up of digital health interventions. To advance work in this field, this paper then develops an economic evaluation framework that can be used when determining the economic value of digital health interventions. Such a standardized approach, alongside guidance to assist the conduct and use of economic evidence, can improve decision making and investments in DHI under constrained health budgets. The resulting digital health intervention economic evaluation framework consists of 5 steps: (1) determine the context, (2) determine the intervention type, (3) establish the level of complexity, (4) set the analytic principles, and (5) represent the value proposition. Users of the framework should attempt to adhere to its steps and principles, but where this is not feasible or appropriate, they should provide justification for the methodological choice. The framework should facilitate methodological transparency, thereby improving the overall usefulness of economic evaluations of digital health interventions.Publication A Puzzle with Missing Pieces: Explaining the Effectiveness of World Bank Development Projects(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-07-12) Ashton, Louise; Friedman, Jed; Goldemberg, Diana; Hussain, Mustafa Zakir; Kenyon, Thomas; Khan, Akib; Zhou, MoThe identification of key determinants of aid effectiveness is a long-standing question in the development community. This paper reviews the literature on aid effectiveness at the project level and then extends the inquiry in a variety of dimensions with new data on World Bank investment project financing. It confirms that the country institutional setting and quality of project supervision are associated with project success, as identified previously. However, many aspects of the development project cycle, especially project design, have been difficult to measure and therefore under-investigated. The paper finds that project design, as proxied by the estimated value added of design staff, the presence of prior analytic work, and other specially collected measures, is a significant predictor of ultimate project success. These factors generally grow in predictive importance as the income level of the country rises. The results also indicate that a key determinant of the staff's contribution is their experience with previous World Bank projects, but not other characteristics such as age, education, or country location. Key inputs to the project production process associated with subsequent performance are not captured in routine data systems, although it is feasible to do so. Further, the conceptualization and measurement of the success of project-based aid should be revisited by evaluative bodies to reflect a project's theorized contribution to development outcomes.Publication Lives, Livelihoods, and Learning: A Global Perspective on the Well-Being Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-22) Decerf, Benoit; Mendes, Arthur; Yonzan, Nishant; Friedman, Jed; Pennings, StevenThis study compares the magnitude of national level losses that the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted across three critical dimensions: loss of life, loss of income, and loss of learning. The well-being consequences of excess mortality are expressed in years of life lost, while those of income losses and school closures are expressed in additional years spent in poverty (measured by national poverty lines), either currently or in the future. While 2020–21 witnessed a global drop in life expectancy and the largest one-year increase in global poverty in many decades, widespread school closures may cause almost twice as large an increase in future poverty. The estimates of well-being loss for the average global citizen include a loss of 8 days of life, an additional two and half weeks spent in poverty in 2020 and 2021 (17 days), and the possibility of an additional month of life in poverty in the future due to school closures (31 days). Well-being losses are unequally distributed across countries. The typical high-income country suffered the least additional poverty years while low- and low-middle-income countries suffered far higher poverty losses with roughly the same degree of mortality shock as richer countries. Upper-middle income countries experienced the highest mortality shock of all and also high poverty costs. Aggregating total losses requires the valuation of a year of life lost vis-à-vis an additional year spent in poverty. For the wide range of valuations considered, high-income countries experienced the lowest well-being loss. Aggregate losses were much higher among lower-income countries. This is especially true for countries in the Latin America region who suffered the largest mortality costs as well as large losses in learning and sharp increases in povertyPublication Improving Effective Coverage in Health: Do Financial Incentives Work?(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-05-11) de Walque, Damien; Kandpal, Eeshani; Wagstaff, Adam; Friedman, Jed; Neelsen, Sven; Piatti-Fünfkirchen, Moritz; Sautmann, Anja; Shapira, Gil; Van de Poel, EllenIn many low- and middle-income countries, health coverage has improved dramatically in the last two decades, but health outcomes have not. As such, effective coverage -- a measure of service delivery that meets a minimum standard of quality -- remains unacceptably low. This Policy Research Report examines one specific policy approach to improving effective coverage: financial incentives in the form of performance-based financing (PBF) or financial incentives to health workers on the front lines. The report draws on a rich set of rigorous studies and new analysis. When compared to business-as-usual, in low-income settings with centralized health systems PBF can result in substantial gains in effective coverage. However, the relative benefits of PBF are less clear when it is compared to two alternative approaches, decentralized facility financing which provides operating budget to frontline health services with facility autonomy on allocation, and demand-side financial support for health services (i.e., conditional cash transfers and vouchers). While PBF often results in improvements on the margins, closing the substantial gaps in effective health coverage is not yet within reach for many countries. Nonetheless, there are important lessons learned and experiences from the roll-out of PBF over the last decade which can guide health policies into the future.Publication Financial Incentives to Increase Utilization of Reproductive, Maternal, and Child Health Services in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Neelsen, Sven; de Walque, Damien; Friedman, Jed; Wagstaff, AdamFinancial incentives for health providers and households are increasingly used to improve reproductive, maternal, and child health service coverage in low- and middle-income countries. This study provides a quantitative synthesis of their effectiveness. A systematic review was conducted of the effects of performance-based financing, voucher, and conditional cash transfer programs on six reproductive, maternal, and child health service indicators, with eligible evidence coming from randomized controlled trials and studies using double-difference, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity designs. Four literature searches were conducted between September 2016 and March 2021 using seven academic databases, Google Scholar, development agency and think tank websites, and previous systematic reviews. Random effects meta-analysis was used to obtain mean effect sizes. From 58 eligible references 212 impact estimates were extracted, which were synthesized into 130 program-specific effect sizes. Financial incentives increase coverage of all considered reproductive, maternal, and child health indicators, but mean effects sizes are of modest magnitude. Effect size heterogeneity is typically low to moderate, and there is no indication that study bias risk, baseline indicator levels, or a combination of provider- and household-level incentives impact effect sizes. There is, however, weak evidence that mean effect sizes are somewhat smaller for performance-based financing than for voucher and conditional cash transfer programs, and that the increase in income, rather than the incentive itself, drives coverage improvements. Financial incentives improve reproductive, maternal, and child health service coverage. If future research confirms the preliminary finding that performance-based financing has smaller effects, voucher and conditional cash transfer programs are the preferred policy option among incentive interventions to achieve higher reproductive, maternal, and child health service coverage. The relative effectiveness and efficiency of incentives compared with unconditional increases of provider and household incomes, however, need to be studied further.Publication The Distribution of Effort: Physical Activity, Gender Roles, and Bargaining Power in an Agrarian Setting(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2023-01-03) Friedman, Jed; Gaddis, Isis; Kilic, Talip; Martuscelli, Antonio; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Zezza, AlbertoPhysical effort is a primary component in models of economic behavior. However, applications that measure effort are historically scarce. This paper assesses the differences in physical activity between men and women through wearable accelerometers and uses these activity measures as a proxy for physical effort. Crucially, the accelerometer-generated data measures the level of physical activity associated with each activity or task recorded in the data. In this rural setting, women exert marginally higher levels of physical effort. However, differences in effort between men and women among married partners are strongly associated with differences in bargaining power, with larger husband-wife effort gaps alongside differences in age, individual land ownership, and an overall empowerment index. Physical activity can exhibit an unequal distribution between men and women suggesting that gender disadvantage, at least within couples, extends to the domain of physical effort.Publication A Puzzle with Missing Pieces: Explaining the Effectiveness of World Bank Development Projects(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12) Ashton, Louise; Friedman, Jed; Goldemberg, Diana; Hussain, Mustafa Zakir; Kenyon, Thomas; Khan, Akib; Zhou, MoThe identification of key determinants of aid effectiveness is a long-standing question in the development community. This paper reviews the literature on aid effectiveness at the project level and then extends the inquiry in a variety of dimensions with new data on World Bank investment project financing. It confirms that the country institutional setting and quality of project supervision are associated with project success, as identified previously. However, many aspects of the development project cycle, especially project design, have been difficult to measure and therefore under-investigated. The paper finds that project design, as proxied by the estimated value added of design staff, the presence of prior analytic work, and other specially collected measures, is a significant predictor of ultimate project success. These factors generally grow in predictive importance as the income level of the country rises. The results also indicate that a key determinant of the staff’s contribution is their experience with previous World Bank projects, but not other characteristics such as age, education, or country location. Key inputs to the project production process associated with subsequent performance are not captured in routine data systems, although it is feasible to do so. Further, the conceptualization and measurement of the success of project-based aid should be revisited by evaluative bodies to reflect a project’s theorized contribution to development outcomes.Publication Productivity and Health: Physical Activity as a Measure of Effort(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06-11) Akogun, Oladele; Dillon, Andres; Friedman, Jed; Prasann, Ashesh; Serneels, PieterThis paper examines the relationship between physical activity and individual productivity among agricultural workers paid on a piece-rate basis. In the context studied, physical activity has a clear correspondence with worker effort. Agricultural workers’ physical activity is directly observed from accelerometer data and is robustly associated with their daily productivity. In addition the impact of a health intervention, which provides malaria testing and treatment, on physical activity and productivity, indicates that the increased daily productivity of workers who are offered this program is explained by worker effort reallocation from low-intensity to high-intensity work within a fixed time period. This demonstrates, in settings when individual productivity is observed, that physical activity measures can help disentangle productivity effects due to effort. When productivity is unobserved, physical activity measures may proxy for individual productivity in physically demanding tasks. The challenges and limitations of physical activity measurement using accelerometers is discussed including their potential use for alternative contexts and the importance of field and data analysis protocols.Publication How Many Infants May Have Died in Low-Income and Middle-Income Countries in 2020 Due to the Economic Contraction Accompanying the COVID-19 Pandemic? Mortality Projections Based on Forecasted Declines in Economic Growth(BMJ Publishing Group, Ltd., 2021-08) Shapira, Gil; de Walque, Damien; Friedman, JedWhile COVID-19 has a relatively small direct impact on infant mortality, the pandemic is expected to indirectly increase mortality of this vulnerable group in low-income and middle-income countries through its effects on the economy and health system performance. Previous studies projected indirect mortality by modelling how hypothesized disruptions in health services will affect health outcomes. We provide alternative projections, relying on modelling the relationship between aggregate income shocks and mortality. The findings underscore the vulnerability of infants to the negative income shocks such as those imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While efforts towards prevention and treatment of COVID-19 remain paramount, the global community should also strengthen social safety nets and assure continuity of essential health services.