Professor Tim Besley

Director of STICERD, School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics, and CEP Associate

Expertise: public economics, development economics, political economics

Telephone:

+44 (0)20 7955 6702

Email:

t.besley@lse.ac.uk

Room:

32L 3.37

Assistant:

Irina Zaraisky

Email:

i.zaraisky@lse.ac.uk

Connect:

Website

Links:

Development
Psychology and Economics
Economics of Environment and Energy
Department of Economics

Biography

Professor Tim Besley's current research interests are:

Public Economics
Development Economics
Political Economics

Tim's latest projects include:

Latest

State effectiveness and the climate crisis

12 May 2022

Timothy Besley

Combatting the climate crisis is not just an issue of finding money for the right kinds of investment but also ensuring that it is spent effectively, says economist Tim Besley.... Read more...

Motivated science and green innovation

01 April 2022

Timothy Besley

Scientists create innovation. Is this because they are paid to do it, or because they care about the outcome? Tim Besley tells Tim Phillips how motivated science drives down the cost of innovation and may accelerate the ... Read more...

Blog

How might an independent Scotland build fiscal capacity?

28 January 2022

Timothy Besley and Chris Dann

Tim Besley and Chris Dann explain how developing a sense of common purpose is critical for nation-building - and would be a key issue for an independent Scotland.... Read more...

Economics of Environment and Energy Seminar

A discussion about the role of social values and the political economy of climate change

25 November 2021

Tim Besley (LSE)

Blog

Bureaucracy and development

08 November 2021

Timothy Besley, Robin Burgess, Jonathan Old, Adnan Qadir Khan and Guo Xu

How does bureaucracy matter for development? Over the last years, an enormous interest in this question has created a large body of research, mostly focused around evidence from field experiments and micro-level administ... Read more...

Blog

A sense of mutual obligation means that even the rich should see the point of paying their taxes

01 October 2021

Timothy Besley

Creating a strong sense of reciprocity between the state and its citizens makes it more likely they will pay taxes willingly, says Timothy Besley (LSE). As we emerge from a pandemic that emphasised the importance of mutu... Read more...

Blog

State capacity and development clusters

18 June 2021

Timothy Besley, Chris Dann and Torsten Persson

The determinants of economic development have been debated for many years. However, some of these determinants have been hard to measure internationally. Tim Besley, Chris Dann and Torsten Persson review evidence from 25... Read more...

Blog

Free media help combat the spread of COVID-19

22 July 2020

Timothy Besley and Sacha Dray

What is the best response to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic? Although some success stories and key lessons are emerging (early response, large-scale testing, effective containment), countries have adopted a s... Read more...

Blog

Measuring the impact of malfunctioning credit markets on productivity

09 March 2020

Timothy Besley, Isabelle Roland and John Van Reenen

Since the Global Crisis, there has been a renewed awareness of how frictions in credit markets can damage economic efficiency due to a higher cost of capital and/or capital being misallocated away from its most productiv... Read more...

Journal article

Formulating Industrial Policy

01 November 2019

Timothy Besley and Richard Davies

Alongside the challenge of maintaining economic competitiveness in the face of great uncertainty, Brexit brings an opportunity for the government to set out a new industrial strategy. The case for doing so rests on the n... Read more...

STICERD Public Events and Lectures

Amartya Sen Lecture: Foundations of State Effectiveness

13 March 2019

Tim Besley (LSE)

CEP reports

UK growth: a new chapter

02 February 2017

Philippe Aghion, Terra Allas, Timothy Besley, John Browne, Francesco Caselli, Richard Davies, Richard Lambert, Rachel Lomax, Stephen Machin, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, Christopher A. Pissarides, Isabelle Roland, Xavier Rolet, Nicholas Stern and Anna Valero

The UK Economy is at a critical juncture. Leaving the EU creates economic challenges that necessitate widespread policy change. But this also generates an opportunity to tackle some of the long-standing challenges which ... Read more...

Related Events

Sir William Arthur Lewis Chair in Development Economics Inaugural Lecture: Political Economy and Development: a Progress Report

10 February 2016

Tim Besley (LSE)