Ben Groom is an applied economist whose main research focus is on intergenerational equity and social discounting for long-term public projects, such as those relating to climate change and biodiversity conservation. Ben also does empirical work and applied theory on agricultural development and adaptation to climate change, deforestation and biodiversity economics.

Background

Ben studied a BSc in Economics at Sheffield University, an MSC in Environmental and Resource Economics at UCL, and completed his PhD in Economics at UCL in 2005 on the topic of empirical and theoretical aspects of social discounting for distant time horizons.

Ben has a professional background working in environmental and development economics, having spent 2 years as an Overseas Development Institute (ODI) fellow between 1998 and 2000. Since then his work on social discounting has informed government policy guidance in the US, UK, Norway and the Netherlands, inter alia, and also OECD guidance on Cost Benefit Analysis for transport projects. Ben acted as a consultant for numerous international organisations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the OECD and the WWF. He has also advised governments in lower and middle income countries, such as China, Pakistan and Bolivia, on various aspects of environmental policy. Ben is chair of the scientific committee of the BIOECON network and co-organiser of the annual BIOECON conference.

Research interests

• Social discounting and intergenerational equity
• Agricultural economics, adaptation to climate change and the role of new varieties and crop genetic diversity,
• The economics of biodiversity