Ana Ferrer graduated from Boston University in 1999 and is currently a full professor at the University of Waterloo.

Her research developed in Canada and focuses on labour markets, with an emphasis on immigration and family outcomes. Her work on immigration includes research on different aspects of the labour market premium attached to immigrant credentials and other skills brought by immigrants to Canada. Her work on family economics regards the impact of housing on child development and the incidence of family friendly benefits. At the intersection of both fields she has investigated the fertility of Canadian immigrants and its consequences for the integration of immigrant women in society. Her current research is concerned with the effects of linguistic fluency on immigrant economic outcomes. This work has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, Population Studies, Labour Economics, International Migration Review, the Journal of Human Resources the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Canadian Journal of Economics and Canadian Public Policy.

She is the Director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF) and Assistant Treasurer of the Canadian Economic Association, member of the Children Migration Network at Princeton University. She is also an external Research Fellow at the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at the University College of London.

Ana joined IZA as a Research Fellow in July 2017.