Tim Besley | |
|---|---|
 Tim Besley in 2022 | |
| Born | (1960-09-14)14 September 1960 (age 65) Kesteven,Lincolnshire, England |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
| Doctoral advisor | W.M. Gorman |
| Influences | Amartya Sen James Mirrlees James M. Buchanan[1] |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Political economics |
| Institutions | London School of Economics Princeton University All Souls College, Oxford |
| Doctoral students | Rohini Pande Dave Donaldson Imran Rasul |
| Notable ideas | Citizen-candidate model, Political Agency Models, Economics of State Capacity |
| Awards | Yrjö Jahnsson Award (2005) John von Neumann Award (2010) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2022) |
| Website | |
Sir Timothy John Besley,CBE, FBA (born 14 September 1960) is a British academic economist who is the School Professor of Economics and Political Science and Sir W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics at theLondon School of Economics (LSE).[2]
He is also a commissioner on theNational Infrastructure Commission,[3] a Quondam Fellow ofAll Souls College, Oxford since 2018,[4] and has been the director of the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economic and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at the LSE.[5] He has served as president of theEuropean Economic Association, theInternational Economic Association and theEconometric Society. He has been an editor of theAmerican Economic Review and is aco-editor of theAnnual Review of Economics.[6] From 2006 to 2009 he was an external member of the Bank of England'sMonetary Policy Committee. Besley has won the 2005Yrjö Jahnsson Award[7] and the 2022BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award among others.[8][9]
Born inLincolnshire,[10] Sir Tim Besley attendedAylesbury Grammar School and then studied atOxford University,[11] where he gained a BA inPhilosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) with First Class Honours fromKeble College, winning the George Webb Medley Prize for best exam performance in his cohort for his second and third years. He continued his graduate studies at Oxford, receiving an MPhil in economics with Distinction and the George Webb Medley Prize for the best MPhil performance in his cohort, followed by a DPhil in Economics upon election as an Examination Fellow ofAll Souls College in 1984.[12][1]
Besley's first position was as an assistant professor in the economics department andWoodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs atPrinceton University. He returned to the UK in 1995, becoming a Professor of Economics in theDepartment of Economics atLSE (1995-1997).[12][1][4] He was a Professor of Economics and Political Science (1997-2007), followed by named professorships: as Kuwait Professor of Economics and Political Science (2007-2011), School Professor of Economics and Political Science (2012-ongoing), and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics (2015-ongoing).[4]
Besley served as the deputy director (1997-2000) and director (2000-2011) of the Suntory-Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD), being succeeded byOriana Bandiera in 2012.[1][5][13] He has been a member of the Steering Group for theInternational Growth Centre (IGC),[14] a co-chair of theLSE Growth Commission[15] and an academic director of IGC's Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development.[16]
Besley is a research fellow of theCentre for Economic Policy Research,[17] and a former member of the Institutions, Organizations and Growth Programme of theCanadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).[18] He is a past research fellow of theInstitute for Fiscal Studies[19] and was a member of the committee for the Mirrlees Review of the tax system.[20] He was a member of theNational Infrastructure Commission (NIC).[21] When the NIC was superseded by theNational Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) in April 2025, Besley was appointed to the NISTA Council of Expert Advisors.[22]
Besley served on theBank of England'sMonetary Policy Committee from September 2006 to August 2009.[21] On the international level, Besley has served as a consultant to theWorld Bank[9][23] and to theEuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development.[24] In June 2021, he was appointed to theWorld Bank–International Monetary Fund High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery and Growth, co-chaired byMari Pangestu,Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, andNicholas Stern.[25]
Besley's research deals primarily withdevelopment economics,public economics andpolitical economy, often with a policy focus.[26] He studies economic policy formation in developed and emerging market economies. He has been a major influence in bringing the study of political economy back into mainstream economics.[27][28]
Besley was the 2010 president of theEuropean Economic Association.[29] From 2014 to 2017, he served as president of theInternational Economic Association.[30] In 2018, he was president of theEconometric Society.[31]
From 1999–2004 he was a co-editor ofAmerican Economic Review[32] – the first person to serve in this position not based at a US university.[1] As of 2025, he became aco-editor of theAnnual Review of Economics.[6]
A selected bibliography includes:
Sir Tim Besley is aFellow of the British Academy,[33] and a fellow of theEconometric Society (2000).[34] He is a foreign honorary member of theAmerican Economic Association (2007)[35] and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011).[36]
In 2005, he won theYrjö Jahnsson Award along withJordi Galí 'for their landmark contributions in development economics, public economics, and political economy, and for the development of the "New Keynesian" macroeconomics.'.[27] He was awarded the 2010John von Neumann Award by the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies at Corvinus University of Budapest.[37]
Besley was appointed aCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the2010 Birthday Honours for services to Social Science, and aKnight Bachelor in the2018 New Year Honours for services to Economics and Public Policy.[38][39] For 2022 he was awarded theBBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.[40]
Besley married political economist Gillian Paull in 1993; the couple has two sons.[12] He lives inBarnes, in theLondon Borough of Richmond upon Thames.[41]
