science

Tim Besley

Tim Besley is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tim Besley rather than just read about it. In short: Sir Timothy John Besley, (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 the London School of Economics (LSE).

Key takeaways

Tim Besley belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tim Besley to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tim Besley from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sir Timothy John Besley, (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 the London School of Economics (LSE). He is also a commissioner on the National Infrastructure Commission, a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford since 2018, and has been the director of the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economic and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at the LSE. He has served as president of the European Economic Association, the International Economic Association and the Econometric Society. He has been an editor of the American Economic Review and is a co-editor of the Annual Review of Economics. From 2006 to 2009 he was an external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. Besley has won the 2005 Yrjö Jahnsson Award and the 2022 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award among others.

Early life and education Born in Lincolnshire, Sir Tim Besley attended Aylesbury Grammar School and then studied at Oxford University, where he gained a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) with First Class Honours from Keble 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 of All Souls College in 1984.

Career Besley's first position was as an assistant professor in the economics department and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He returned to the UK in 1995, becoming a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at LSE (1995-1997). 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). 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 by Oriana Bandiera in 2012. He has been a member of the Steering Group for the International Growth Centre (IGC), a co-chair of the LSE Growth Commission and an academic director of IGC's Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development. Besley is a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a former member of the Institutions, Organizations and Growth Programme of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). He is a past research fellow of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and was a member of the committee for the Mirrlees Review of the tax system. He was a member of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC). When the NIC was superseded by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) in April 2025, Besley was appointed to the NISTA Council of Expert Advisors. Besley served on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from September 2006 to August 2009. On the international level, Besley has served as a consultant to the World Bank and to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In June 2021, he was appointed to the World Bank–International Monetary Fund High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery and Growth, co-chaired by Mari Pangestu, Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, and Nicholas Stern.

Research Besley's research deals primarily with development economics, public economics and political economy, often with a policy focus. 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. Besley was the 2010 president of the European Economic Association. From 2014 to 2017, he served as president of the International Economic Association. In 2018, he was president of the Econometric Society. From 1999–2004 he was a co-editor of American Economic Review – the first person to serve in this position not based at a US university. As of 2025, he became a co-editor of the Annual Review of Economics. A selected bibliography includes:

"Principled Agents: The Political Economy of Good Government", Oxford University Press, 2006. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters", Princeton University Press, 2011 (with Torsten Persson). "Incumbent Behavior: Vote Seeking, Tax Setting and Yardstick Competition" (with Anne Case). American Economic Review, 85 (1), 25–45, 1995. "Property Rights and Investment Incentives: Theory and Evidence from Ghana", Journal of Political Economy, 103(5), 903–937, 1995. "An Economic Model of Representative Democracy" (with Stephen Coate), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(1), 85–114, 1997. "The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India", (with Robin Burgess), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), 1415–1452, 2002. "Competition and Incentives with Motivated Agents", (with Maitreesh Ghatak), American Economic Review, 95(3), 616–636, 2005. "The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation and Politics", (with Torsten Persson) American Economic Review, 99(4), 1218–44, 2009. "The Logic of Political Violence", (with Torsten Persson) Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126 (3), 1411–1446, 2011. "State Capacity, Reciprocity and the Social Contract", Econometrica, 88(4) 1307–1335, 2020. "The Political Economics of Green Transitions", (with Torsten Persson) Quarterly Journal of Economics, 138 (3), 1863-1906, 2023.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tim Besley

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tim Besley claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tim Besley before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tim Besley ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tim Besley

In research: Tim Besley appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tim Besley in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tim Besley is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1961 births, 20th-century British economists, 21st-century British economists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tim Besley outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tim Besley in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tim Besley means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tim Besley out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tim Besley in simple terms?

Why does Tim Besley matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tim Besley?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tim Besley.