Tim Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics at the London School of Economics. He served on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee between 2006 and 2009 and is a member of the UK Government's National Infrastructure Commission. He previously taught at Princeton University, and is a Research Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. 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 is currently a managing editor of Economica. His professional honours include being a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Foreign Honourary Member of the American Economic Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as President of the European Economic Association (2010), the International Economic Association (2014-17), the Econometric Society (2018) and Royal Econonomic Society (2021-2). 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. In 2018, he was knighted for services to Economics and Public Policy.