Thorsten Beck
Biographic Data
| ID | 3961115 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thorsten Beck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thorsten |
| FAMILY NAME | Beck |
| SIGNATURE | BECK T |
| AFFILIATIONS | World Bank |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Is the Bangladesh Paradox Sustainable?: The Institutional Diagnostic Project
Bangladesh is widely seen as a 'paradox'. Over the last quarter of a century, it has maintained economic growth and has outperformed many countries on social indicators while scoring very low on the quality of governance. Moreover, its economic progress does not seem to indicate significant improvement in comparative institutional indicators. Is the Bangladesh Paradox Sustainable? thus examines whether such a paradoxical combination can be sustai…
Banking in Africa
This chapter takes stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses recent developments, including innovations that might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models. Using an array of different data, the chapter documents that African banking systems are shallow but stable. African banks are well capitalized and over-liquid, but lend less to the private sector than banks in non-African developing cou…
Positional deprivation and support for radical right and radical left parties
We explore how support for radical parties of both the left and right may be shaped by what we call ‘positional deprivation’, where growth in income of individuals at a given point in the income distribution is outpaced by income growth elsewhere in that distribution. We argue that positional deprivation captures the combination of over-time and relative misfortune that can be expected to distinctly spur support for radical left and right parties…
Finance and Demand for Skill: Evidence from Uganda
We explore the empirical interaction between firm growth, financing constraints, and job creation. Using a novel small-business survey from Uganda, we find that the extent to which small businesses expand skilled employment as their sales and profits increase is significantly related to access to external funding, while the hiring of casual and family workers is not. The results are robust to the inclusion of various firm level controls, region a…
Payment instruments, finance and development
This paper studies the effects of a payment technology innovation (mobile money) on entrepreneurship and economic development in a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model. In the model mobile money dominates fiat money as a medium of exchange, since it avoids the risk of theft, but comes with electronic transaction costs. We show that entrepreneurs with higher productivity and access to trade credit are more likely to adopt mobile money as…
Do Criminal Complaints Make Sense in (German) International Criminal Law: A Prosecutor's Perspective
The authors discuss the relevance of complaints that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can bring under German international criminal law. They argue that, due to the operation of Germany’s criminal procedural laws, complaints regarding international crimes only make sense in specific circumstances. This is true in particular with regard to cases that are not in the centre of media attention and when NGOs are able to provide important informat…
Finance and Growth for Microenterprises: Evidence from Rural China
Is Small Beautiful? Financial Structure, Size and Access to Finance
Access to Finance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Is There a Gender Gap
Financing patterns around the world: Are small firms different?☆
Why are interest spreads so high in Uganda
Reaching out: Access to and use of banking services across countries
Finance, inequality and the poor
Small and Medium Enterprises Across the Globe
Small and medium-size enterprises: Access to finance as a growth constraint
SMEs, Growth, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence
Stock markets, banks, and growth: Panel evidence
Law and Firms’ Access to Finance
Why does a country's legal origin influence its firms' access to finance? Using data from over 4,000 firms in 38 countries, the authors show that firms in countries with French legal origin face significantly higher obstacles in accessing external finance than firms in common law countries. Next, their results indicate that French legal origin countries tend to have (1) less adaptable legal systems, as defined by the degree to which case law and …
Finance, Inequality, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence
"While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions about the impact of financial development on changes in income distribution and poverty alleviation. We find that financial development reduces income in…
Law and finance: Why does legal origin matter?
Financial development and international trade
Law and Finance: Why Does Legal Origin Matter
New research suggests that cross-country differences in legal origin help explain differences in financial development. This paper empirically assesses two theories of why legal origin influences financial development. First, the "political" channel stresses that (i) legal traditions differ in the priority they give to the rights of individual investors vis--vis the state and (ii) this has repercussions for the development of property rights and …
New Tools in Comparative Political Economy: The Database of Political Institutions
This article introduces a large new cross‐country database, the Database of Political Institutions. It covers 177 countries over 21 years, 1975–95. The article presents the intuition, construction, and definitions of the different variables. Among the novel variables introduced are several measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability, identification of party affiliation with government or opposition, and fragmentation of opposition and g…
Finance and the sources of growth
Experience of Poverty
Part 1 Poor people love to eat fish. Part 2 Beyond enumeration - the construction of poverty in 19th-century Britain and 20th-century India: introduction the construction of poverty in 19th-century Britain measurement and morality - Charles Booth and Joseph Rowntree solutions to poverty and regulation of the poor poverty measurement in India contemporary poverty measurement and poverty-line language the construction of the poor in contemporary po…
Access to Finance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Is There a Gender Gap
Payment instruments, finance and development
This paper studies the effects of a payment technology innovation (mobile money) on entrepreneurship and economic development in a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model. In the model mobile money dominates fiat money as a medium of exchange, since it avoids the risk of theft, but comes with electronic transaction costs. We show that entrepreneurs with higher productivity and access to trade credit are more likely to adopt mobile money as…
Finance and Growth for Microenterprises: Evidence from Rural China
Is Small Beautiful? Financial Structure, Size and Access to Finance
Why are interest spreads so high in Uganda
The French Revolution and the Nobility: A Reconsideration
Journal Article The French Revolution and the Nobility: A Reconsideration Get access Thomas Beck Thomas Beck Chapman College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 15, Issue 2, Winter 1981, Pages 219–233, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/15.2.219 Published: 01 December 1981
The French Revolution and the Nobility: A Reconsideration
Journal Article The French Revolution and the Nobility: A Reconsideration Get access Thomas Beck Thomas Beck Chapman College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 15, Issue 2, Winter 1981, Pages 219–233, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/15.2.219 Published: 01 December 1981
Experience of Poverty
Part 1 Poor people love to eat fish. Part 2 Beyond enumeration - the construction of poverty in 19th-century Britain and 20th-century India: introduction the construction of poverty in 19th-century Britain measurement and morality - Charles Booth and Joseph Rowntree solutions to poverty and regulation of the poor poverty measurement in India contemporary poverty measurement and poverty-line language the construction of the poor in contemporary po…
Finance and the sources of growth
New Tools in Comparative Political Economy: The Database of Political Institutions
This article introduces a large new cross‐country database, the Database of Political Institutions. It covers 177 countries over 21 years, 1975–95. The article presents the intuition, construction, and definitions of the different variables. Among the novel variables introduced are several measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability, identification of party affiliation with government or opposition, and fragmentation of opposition and g…
Financial development and international trade
Law and Finance: Why Does Legal Origin Matter
New research suggests that cross-country differences in legal origin help explain differences in financial development. This paper empirically assesses two theories of why legal origin influences financial development. First, the "political" channel stresses that (i) legal traditions differ in the priority they give to the rights of individual investors vis--vis the state and (ii) this has repercussions for the development of property rights and …
Law and finance: Why does legal origin matter?
Stock markets, banks, and growth: Panel evidence
Law and Firms’ Access to Finance
Why does a country's legal origin influence its firms' access to finance? Using data from over 4,000 firms in 38 countries, the authors show that firms in countries with French legal origin face significantly higher obstacles in accessing external finance than firms in common law countries. Next, their results indicate that French legal origin countries tend to have (1) less adaptable legal systems, as defined by the degree to which case law and …
Finance, Inequality, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence
"While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions about the impact of financial development on changes in income distribution and poverty alleviation. We find that financial development reduces income in…
SMEs, Growth, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence
Small and medium-size enterprises: Access to finance as a growth constraint
Reaching out: Access to and use of banking services across countries
Finance, inequality and the poor
Small and Medium Enterprises Across the Globe
Financing patterns around the world: Are small firms different?☆
Why are interest spreads so high in Uganda
Is Small Beautiful? Financial Structure, Size and Access to Finance
Access to Finance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Is There a Gender Gap
Finance and Growth for Microenterprises: Evidence from Rural China
Do Criminal Complaints Make Sense in (German) International Criminal Law: A Prosecutor's Perspective
The authors discuss the relevance of complaints that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can bring under German international criminal law. They argue that, due to the operation of Germany’s criminal procedural laws, complaints regarding international crimes only make sense in specific circumstances. This is true in particular with regard to cases that are not in the centre of media attention and when NGOs are able to provide important informat…
Payment instruments, finance and development
This paper studies the effects of a payment technology innovation (mobile money) on entrepreneurship and economic development in a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model. In the model mobile money dominates fiat money as a medium of exchange, since it avoids the risk of theft, but comes with electronic transaction costs. We show that entrepreneurs with higher productivity and access to trade credit are more likely to adopt mobile money as…
Banking in Africa
This chapter takes stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses recent developments, including innovations that might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models. Using an array of different data, the chapter documents that African banking systems are shallow but stable. African banks are well capitalized and over-liquid, but lend less to the private sector than banks in non-African developing cou…
Positional deprivation and support for radical right and radical left parties
We explore how support for radical parties of both the left and right may be shaped by what we call ‘positional deprivation’, where growth in income of individuals at a given point in the income distribution is outpaced by income growth elsewhere in that distribution. We argue that positional deprivation captures the combination of over-time and relative misfortune that can be expected to distinctly spur support for radical left and right parties…
Finance and Demand for Skill: Evidence from Uganda
We explore the empirical interaction between firm growth, financing constraints, and job creation. Using a novel small-business survey from Uganda, we find that the extent to which small businesses expand skilled employment as their sales and profits increase is significantly related to access to external funding, while the hiring of casual and family workers is not. The results are robust to the inclusion of various firm level controls, region a…
Economics (21 works) · Business (13 works) · Access to Finance (9 works) · Economic growth (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Banking stability, regulation, efficiency (8 works) · Corporate Finance and Governance (8 works) · Finance (8 works) · Finance (8 works) · Financial system (8 works)