Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government

Mainstream policy economics now pays more attention to the delivery of policy outcomes and how incentives and institutional change shape the effectiveness of government. But should these issues be studied against a background of purely self-interested public servants? There is plenty of evidence that many citizens are publicly spirited. Can their motivation be harnessed in the public interest? These lectures review how economic thought on these issues has evolved.

Timothy Besley is Professor of Economics at the LSE and Director of the Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at the LSE. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He has acted as Co-Editor of the American Economic Review and Managing Editor of the Economic Journal. He is an elected member of the Council of the Royal Economic Society, the Econometric Society, and the European Economics Association.