Policy Punchline

In this interview, Prof. Tim Besley of LSE highlights issues in development economics and introduces a series of new concepts such as "fragile states" and "the Curse of Denmark" that provide much needed nuances in discussions about development. As an introduction to this interview, we want to highlight one important point from Prof. Besley’s talk on state fragility in Princeton. He noted how the U.S., U.K., and stable states as such are all recent human contrivances. Humans have really only existed 73 seconds past midnight if we normalize the existence of Earth to 24 hours, and we’ve had stable political systems for merely 0.01 second. How do we know whether our current systems are stable? “To say that we've transitioned to some new world that is inevitably stable and will never revert would be a very dangerous belief to have,” as Prof. Besley also commented during our interview. It’s dangerous to think that human progress will be linear, and we have to stay vigilant and humble as we continue to tackle th