Ben has a PhD in economics from the Department of Economics at University College London. Ben joined the University of Exeter from the London School of Economics in the summer of 2020 as the Dragon Capital Chair in Biodiversity Economics.

Ben is a member of the HM Treasury Biodiversity Working Group which is tasked with looking at how to ensure biodiversity is accounted for Cost benefit Analysis of public policy and investment. He has worked on intergenerational fairness in social decision making and has advised governments across the world on their approach to long-term policy and investment in relation to environmental issues such as biodiversity and climate change. Papers in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Economic Journal, the American Economic Review (P&P), Science and Nature have been presented to the UK, US and EU governments and informed their guidance on social discounting and long-term decision-making.

Prior to his academic career, Pr Groom worked as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow in the Department of Water Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture, in the Government of the Republic of Namibia, and as a consultant to the UN Mission in Kosovo. He has worked as a consultant to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Pakistan, the OECD and the Government of China. View full CV

Ben has worked on intergenerational fairness in social decision making and has advised governments across the world on their approach to long-term policy and investment in relation to environmental issues such as biodiversity and climate change. Specific research interests include:

• Biodiversity and climate change economics;
• Intergenerational fairness the social discount rate for long-term policy;
• Land-use change, the causes of deforestation, habitat and biodiversity loss;
• Behavioural and experimental economics for social and individual preferences;
• Finance and biodiversity;
• Conflict, individual preferences and conflict resolution