Sir Timothy John Besley, (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).He is also a commissioner on the National Infrastructure Commission, a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and the director of the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at the LSE. In 2018, he served as president of the Econometric Society, and from 2006 to 2009 he was an external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. He won the 2005 Yrjö Jahnsson Award.