Date: Wednesday 23 September 2009
Time: 7-8.30pm
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Professor Tim Besley
Chair: Professor Robin Burgess

It is widely recognised that the interplay of political and economic forces has a major bearing on the path of development. How do the developments in the recent political economy literature bear on the practical problems that some countries face in achieving sustainable development paths?

Tim Besley is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics, and served on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from September 2006 until August 2009. He is director of the Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at LSE. He previously taught at Princeton University, and is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His work focuses mainly on issues in development economics, public economics and political economy. He has published widely on a variety of topics, mainly with a policy focus. He has been a Co-Editor of the American Economic Review, and Editor of the Economic Journal. He currently serves on the editorial boards of numerous other professional journals. His professional honours include being a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a British Academy Research Reader. In 2005, he won the prestigious biannual Yrjö Jahnsson Award for his research. He was educated at Oxford University (BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, 1st, M.Phil and a D.Phil in Economics) where he became a Prize Fellow of All Souls College.

The next public event in Growth Week will be on Thursday 24 September, and will be a public lecture on Green Growth by Professor Lord Stern.

The International Growth Centre promotes sustainable growth in developing countries by providing demand-led policy advice based on frontier research. Based at LSE and in partnership with Oxford University, the IGC was initiated by and is funded by DFID.

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