Dr Ben Ferrett

BA (Cambridge), MSc (Warwick), PhD (Warwick)

  • Senior Lecturer in Economics

Expertise: globalisation; international trade; foreign direct investment; multinational enterprises; industrial organisation

Research groups and centres

A graduate of the Universities of Cambridge and Warwick, Ben Ferrett is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Loughborough University. Previously, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Nottingham Centre for Research on Globalisation and Economic Policy. He is an applied game theorist with research interests in international trade, industrial organisation and public economics, while most of his teaching focuses on the economics of globalisation.

A unifying theme in Ben’s research is the study of the strategic decisions of large firms that enjoy market power. Recent and ongoing research projects have studied fiscal competition between host countries for the investments of footloose multinationals, and the choice between horizontal merger and research joint venture when there are synergies between competing firms’ R&D activities. Ben has received research funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy, and he has published papers in leading journals such as Economica, the Canadian Journal of Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics and International Tax and Public Finance.

Module organiser

  • ECB005 International Economic Relations (Semester 1)
  • ECC013 International Economic Relations (Semester 1)
  • ECC031 International Trade (Semester 1)
  • ECP259 Economics of International Business (Semester 2)

I am an applied game theorist: I build economic models to analyse real-world issues. My current research interests cover international trade, industrial organisation and public economics, and include:

  • Policy competition between national governments for mobile firms. I am interested in analysing a wide range of ways in which governments compete to attract inward FDI (e.g. through subsidy/tax offers, changes in regulatory standards in relation to the workplace or the environment, etc.). I am also interested in analysing the implications of policy co-operation between national governments in the presence of mobile capital (which might be motivated by a desire to limit the “race to the bottom”).
  • R&D co-operation between rival firms. I have studied a number of vehicles through which R&D collaboration might be achieved in the presence of potential synergies (e.g. mergers, research joint ventures, and research networks), and I have also studied the implications of such collaboration for wages and welfare.
  • "Does Tax Competition Make Mobile Firms More Footloose?" with A Hoefele and I Wooton, Canadian Journal of Economics, 2019, 52(1), 379–402.
  • "Horizontal Agreements and R&D Complementarities: Merger versus RJV" with J Poyago-Theotoky, International Journal of the Economics of Business, 2016, 23(1), pp. 87-107.
  • "Regional Centrality and Tax Competition for FDI" with J Darby and I Wooton, Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2014, vol. 49, pp. 84-92.
  • "Wage‐Setting Institutions and R&D Collaboration Networks" with V Zikos, Australian Economic Papers, 2013, 52(2), pp. 61-78.
  • Competing for a Duopoly: International Trade and Tax Competition" with I Wooton, Canadian Journal of Economics, 2010, 43(3), pp. 776–794.