Professor Ben A. Rissing studies regulatory, mobility, and social processes that operate behind the scenes to shape important facets of modern careers. These topics include how government regulators affect immigrant hiring and compensation, the performance implications of worker mobility, and the functioning of new organizational recruitment systems reliant on social connections. For his research, he negotiates access to, and analyzes, unique personnel data within U.S. government agencies, for-profit businesses, and university admissions systems, which often encompass millions of observations. Using modern data analytics, he builds datasets by joining disparate administrative, application, and employee records. Rissing uses these data to test theories with key implications for governments, workers, and practitioners.

Dr. Rissing is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University’s ILR School. He earned his doctorate in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management; master’s degrees in management science and engineering management from MIT and Duke University, respectively; and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia. Before joining Cornell University, Ben was the Hugh W. Pearson Visiting Professor of Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship at Brown University and a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Brown University Watson Institute for International Studies. He also previously conducted research as a Wertheim Fellow with the Harvard Law School.