What happens when a woman wins an election? Evidence from close races in Brazil

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• 作者：Fernanda Brollo^a ; ^{f.brollo@warwick.ac.uk" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Ugo Troiano^b ; ^{troiano@umich.edu" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：J16 ; H41 ; P16 ; D72 ; I00 ; I18
• 刊名：Journal of Development Economics
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：September 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：122
• 期：Complete
• 页码：28-45
• 全文大小：2646 K

文摘

We analyze close elections between male and female mayoral candidates in Brazilian municipalities to provide novel evidence on the role of women as policymakers. Using an objective measure of corruption based on random government audits, we find that female mayors are less likely to engage in corruption compared to male mayors. We also find that female mayors hire fewer temporary public employees than male mayors during the electoral year and tend to attract less campaign contributions when running for reelection. Moreover, our results show that female mayors have a lower reelection probability than male mayors. We interpret our findings as suggesting that male incumbents are more likely to engage in strategic behavior and this improves their electoral performance. Other explanations receive less support from the data.