LSE Professor Receives BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award
Professor Sir Tim Besley, School Professor of Economics and Political Science at LSE, has been awarded a prestigious BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management. He shares the award with Torsten Persson (Stockholm University) and Guido Tabellini (Bocconi University) for their work in transforming political economy into a modern, empirical, interdisciplinary science.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation.
All three have shown in their research that the institutional, electoral and party systems of a given state determine its public spending, level of indebtedness and system of taxation; that unequal wealth and income distribution holds back economic growth; and drawing attention to the role of state capacity in building effective states.
The award committee particularly commended the three for “illuminating the connections between the economic and political worlds” and “transforming the field of political economy”. The three awardees, together with the late Alberto Alesina (Harvard University), have employed both theoretical and empirical tools to examine “how political institutions and processes shape economic policies and outcomes on one hand, and how economic factors shape political institutions on the other,” contributing decisively to shape the field of modern political economy.
The work of Besley, Persson and Tabellini, the citation concludes, “has enriched economics by drawing important connections between the economy and politics,” and “has spawned a flourishing literature in several areas of the social sciences.”
Tim Besley, who is School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics in the Department of Economics at LSE, said: “I am honored to be one of this year’s recipients of this prestigious BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award which recognizes the growing importance of political economy as a sub-field of economics. Sharing it with Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini makes it particularly special.”
On announcing the award, the BBVA said: “The three awardees have made fundamental contributions to studying how political institutions and processes shape economic policies and outcomes and how economic factors, in turn, shape political institutions.
“They have shown in their research that the institutional, electoral and party systems of a given state determine its public spending, level of indebtedness and system of taxation; that unequal wealth and income distribution holds back economic growth; and that term limitations can negatively impact spending and fiscal cycles. They have also shown that the institutional, electoral and party systems of a given state determine its public spending, level of indebtedness and system of taxation; that unequal wealth and income distribution holds back economic growth; and that term limitations can negatively impact spending and fiscal cycles.”