Belton Fleisher attended Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1961. He was on the faculty of the University of Chicago 1961-65 and joined the Ohio State University faculty in 1965, where he is professor of economics. He is currently a Senior Fellow and Special Term Professor of the China Center for Human Capital and Labor Market Research at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing. He has authored and coauthored over 40 articles in professional journals including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Education, and China Economic. He has published a number of books, including The Economics of Delinquency (1966) and what is considered by many to be the first "modern" labor economics text, Labor Economics: Theory and Evidence (1970). Since 1990, his research has focused on the Chinese economy. He currently serves as a Executive Editor of China Economic Review.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2007.