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 the London School of Economics (LSE).
Born in Lincolnshire,[1] 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.
Besley's research is focused on aspects of economic policy formation in developed and emerging market economies. He is one of the leading economists in restoring the study of political economy to prominence in mainstream 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.
Besley married political economist Gillian Paull in 1993; the couple has two sons. He lives in Barnes, Richmond upon Thames in London. He is a fan of Fulham Football Club.