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.

• 1 COMPETING VIEWS OF GOVERNMENT ; The issues ; This book ; Background ; Economic Policy Making ; Political Economy ; Incentives and Selection in Politics ; Concluding Comments ; 2 THE ANATOMY OF GOVERNMENT FAILURE ; Introduction ; Three Notions of Government Failure ; The Basic Model ; Government Failure ; Democratic Political Failures ; A Dynamic Model ; Government Failure in the Dynamic Model ; Responses to Political Failure ; Concluding Comments ; 3 POLITICAL AGENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ; Introduction ; Elements of Political Agency Models ; The Baseline Model ; Extensions ; Discussion ; Concluding Comments ; 4 POLITICAL AGENCY AND PUBLIC FINANCE ; Introduction ; The Model ; Three Scenarios ; Implications ; Restraining Government ; Debt and Deficits ; Governments versus NGOs ; Competence ; Conclusions

Besley's book has great strengths and is recommended to all modern students of political economy.