Ben Groom

Ben joined the Department in 2012 from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he was a Senior Lecturer in Economics. He studied Economics at Sheffield University, Environmental and Resource Economics at UCL, and completed his PhD in Economics at UCL in 2005 on empirical and theoretical aspects of social discounting for distant time horizons.

Ben has served as a Consultant for numerous international organisations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the WWF. He has also advised government in the UK, USA, China and Pakistan on various aspects of environmental policy.

• Environmental and development economics, in particular social discounting

• The microeconomics of deforestation

• Agricultural technology adoption in West Africa

• The economics of water

Selected publications:  

• Freeman M.C. and Groom, Ben (forthcoming). ‘How certain are we about the certainty equivalent long-run social discount rate?’ Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, DOI 10.1016/j.jeem.2016.06.004

• Dietz S, Groom, Ben and Pizer W (2016). ‘Weighing the costs and benefits of climate change to our children.’ Future of Children, 26(1), pp133-55. Special issue on climate change, Olivier Deschenes and Janet Currie (eds), Princeton-Brookings

• Groom, Ben (2015). Book review of ‘Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet’ by Dieter Helm. Journal of Economic Literature. 53(4) pp 1043-1045, DOI:10.1257/jel.53.4.1017

• Freeman M C, Groom Ben and Zeckhauser R (2015). ‘Better Predictions, Better Allocations: Scientific Advances and Adaptation to Climate Change’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, Volume 373, Issue 2055

• Freeman M C, Groom, Ben, Panipoulou K and Pantelides T (2015). ‘Declining Discount Rates and the Fisher Effect: Inflated Past, Discounted Future’. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 73, pp. 32-49

• Freeman M.C. and Groom, Ben (2015). ‘Positively Gamma Discounting: Combining the Opinions of Experts on the Social Discount Rate’. The Economic Journal 125: 1015–1024. doi: 10.1111/ecoj.12129
  - media summary from the Royal Economic Society

• Groom, Ben and Tak, M. (2015). ‘Welfare Analysis of Changing Food Prices: A Nonparametric Examination of Rice Policies in India|’. Food Security, DOI 10.1007/s12571-014-0413-x

• Arrow, K. J., Maureen L. Cropper, Christian Gollier, Ben Groom, Geoffrey M. Heal, Richard G. Newell, William D. Nordhaus, Robert S. Pindyck, William A. Pizer, Paul R. Portney, Thomas Sterner, Richard S. J. Tol and Martin L. Weitzman (2014). Should Governments use a Declining Discount Rate in Project Analysis?  Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 8 (2), pp. 145-163
  > Editor’s Choice: http://reep.oxfordjournals.org/content/by/tag/choice

• Groom, Ben  and Palmer C. (2014). Relaxing Constraints as a Conservation Policy, Environment and Development Economics. 19(4), pp 505-528 doi:10.1017/S1355770X13000545

• Cropper M.L., Freeman M.C., Groom, Ben and Pizer W (2014). Declining Discount Rates. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 104(5): pp. 538-43

• Freeman M.C. and Groom, Ben (2014). ‘Using Equity Premium Survey Data to Estimate Future Wealth’. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, DOI 10.1007/s11156-014-0451-7

• Groom, Ben  (2013). Book review of ‘Pricing our Planet’s Future’ by Christian Gollier. Journal of Economic Literature, 51(3), pp 894-97, DOI:10.1257/jel.51.3.883.r7

• Arrow, K., Cropper, M., Gollier, C., Groom, Ben, Heal, G., Newell, R., Nordhaus, W., Pindyck, R., Pizer, W., Portney, P., Sterner, T., Tol, R. S. J. and Weitzman, M. (2013) Determining benefits and costs for future generations. Science, 341 (6144). pp. 349-350. ISSN 0036-8075

• Freeman, Mark C. and Groom, Ben (2013) Biodiversity valuation and the discount rate problem. Accounting, auditing & accountability journal, 26 (5). ISSN 0951-3574

• Groom, Ben and Palmer, Charles (2012) REDD+ and rural livelihoods. Biological Conservation, 154 . pp. 42-52. ISSN 0006-3207

• Swanson, Tim and Groom, Ben (2012) Regulating global biodiversity: what is the problem? Oxford review of economic policy, 28 (1). pp. 114-138. ISSN 0266-903X

• Gatti, Rupert, Goeschl, Timo, Groom, Ben and Swanson, Timothy (2011) The biodiversity bargaining problem. Environmental and resource economics, 48 (4). 609-628 . ISSN 0924-6460

• Groom, Ben, Grosjean, Pauline, Kontoleon, Andreas, Swanson, Timothy and Zhang, Shiqiu (2010) Relaxing rural constraints: a 'win-win' policy for poverty and environment in China? Oxford economic papers, 62 (1). pp. 132-156. ISSN 0030-7653

• Groom, Ben and Palmer, Charles (2010) Cost-effective provision of environmental services: the role of relaxing market constraints. Environment and development economics, 15 (2). pp. 219-240. ISSN 1355-770X

• Groom, Ben, Koundouri, Phoebe, Nauges, Céline and Thomas, Alban (2008) The story of the moment: risk averse cypriot farmers respond to drought management. Applied economics, 40 (3). pp. 315-326. ISSN 0003-6846

• Hepburn, Cameron and Groom, Ben (2007) Gamma discounting and expected net future value. Journal of environmental economics and management, 53 (1). pp. 99-109. ISSN 0095-0696

• Groom, Ben, Koundouri P, Panipoulou K and Pantelides T (2007). ‘Declining Discount Rates: How much does model selection affect the certainty equivalent discount rate?’ Journal of Applied Econometrics, 22(3), pp. 641-656