Welcome. I am a Lecturer in Discipline working with Andrew Gelman at the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University where I teach in the Political Science Department, the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences master's program, and the Environmental Science master's program.

In May 2010, I finished my dissertation in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University. My dissertation derives two new estimators and applies them to cross-country survey data to test competing theories of preferences for redistribution and other welfare-state programs. I am generally interested in methodology, comparative politics, and political economy. Feel free to email me at MyLastname.ben@gmail.com.