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

This paper analyzes the effect of the gender of local policymakers on policy outcomes. Analyzing a rich dataset from Brazilian municipalities and using a regression discontinuity design, we find that municipalities ruled by female mayors have better health outcomes, receive more federal discretionary transfers, and have lower corruption. Additionally, male mayors hire more temporary public employees than their female counterparts when they are allowed to run for re-election, and when municipal elections are approaching. These findings suggest that male mayors may promote more political patronage than female mayors and that men and women may respond differently to local election incentives

Social capital, government expenditures, and growth

We present a tractable stochastic endogenous growth model that explains how social capital influences economic development. In our model, social capital increases citizens' awareness of government activity. Hence, it alleviates the electoral incentives to under- invest in education, whose returns are delayed and less visible to voters. In equilibrium, higher social capital raises the average output growth rate and reduces its volatility by increasing public investment in education while making its returns higher and less variable. Our theory also predicts that a more unequal distribution of social capital reduces public education expenditures. We provide suggestive cross-country evidence consistent with these predictions.Social Capital, Education Expenditures, Economic Growth, Elections, Government Expenditures, Imperfect Information

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

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

Social Capital and Political Accountability

In this paper, we empirically investigate a channel through which social capital may improve economic wellbeing and the functioning of institutions: political accountability. The main idea is that voters who share norms of generalized morality demand higher standards of behavior on their elected representavtives, are more willing to bear the cost of acquiring information, and are more likely to base their vote on criteria of social welfare rather than (narrow) personal interest. We take this conjecture to the data using information on the Italian members of Parliament in the postwar period (1948–2001). The empirical evidence shows that the electoral punishment of political misbehavior is considerably larger in electoral districts with high social capital, where social capital is measured by blood donation, and political misbehavior refers to receiving a request of criminal prosecution or shirking in parliamentary activity. Accordingly, episodes of political misbehavior are less frequent in electoral districts with high social capital.Social Capital, Culture, Political Agency

Labor Market Attitudes and Experienced Political Institutions

In this paper I first present a novel fact: women who have experienced democratic institutions during their adolescence are more likely to participate in the labor market, keeping constant the country, age and many other confounding factors. I then present evidence suggesting that discriminatory attitudes may be a channel for such a finding. Other explanations receive less support from the data

Labor Market Attitudes and Experienced Political Institutions

In this paper I first present a novel fact: women who have experienced democratic institutions during their adolescence are more likely to participate in the labor market, keeping constant the country, age and many other confounding factors. I then present evidence suggesting that discriminatory attitudes may be a channel for such a finding. Other explanations receive less support from the data

Three Essays in Political Economy and Public Finance

Chapter 1 evaluates the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. We implement a "difference-in-discontinuities" design by combining the before/after with the discontinuous policy variation generated by the implementation of the Domestic Stability Pact on Italian municipalities between 1999 and 2004. Our estimates show that relaxing fiscal rules triggers a substantial deficit bias, captured by a shift from a balanced budget to a deficit that amounts to 2 percent of the total budget. The deficit comes primarily from reduced revenues as unconstrained municipalities have lower real estate and income tax rates. The impact is larger if the mayor can run for reelection, the number of political parties seated in the city council is higher, voters are older, the performance of the mayor in providing public good is lower, and cities are characterized by historical deficit, consistently with models on the political economy of fiscal adjustment. Chapter 2 studies the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti tax evasion policy in Italy, which used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. The difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations. After the policy, local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood. These political returns are higher in areas with higher speed of public good provision and with lower tax evasion tolerance, implying complementarity among enforcement policies, government efficiency, and the underlying tax culture. Chapter 3 examines reasons for cross-country variation in maternity leave provision. We show that the less tolerant a society is of gender-based discrimination, the longer the maternity leave it will optimally mandate. We collected new data on the number of gender-differentiated personal pronouns across languages to capture societies' attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. We first confirm, using within-country language variation, that our linguistic measure is correlated with attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. Then, using cross-country data on length of maternity leave we find a strong correlation between our measure of attitudes and the length of maternity leave.Economic

Ghost-House Busters: The Electoral Response to a Large Anti Tax Evasion Program

The incentives of political agents to enforce tax collection are key determinants of the levels of compliance. We study the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti-tax evasion policy in Italy that used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. Two million buildings were registered as a result of the program. Our difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex-ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations. Local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood as a consequence of the policy. In addition, these political returns are higher in areas with lower tax evasion tolerance and with higher speed of public good provision, implying complementarity among enforcement policies, the underlying tax culture, and government efficiency

Ghost-House Busters: The Electoral Response to a Large Anti Tax Evasion Program

The incentives of political agents to enforce tax collection are key determinants of the levels of compliance. We study the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti-tax evasion policy in Italy that used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. Two million buildings were registered as a result of the program. Our difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex-ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations. Local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood as a consequence of the policy. In addition, these political returns are higher in areas with lower tax evasion tolerance and with higher speed of public good provision, implying complementarity among enforcement policies, the underlying tax culture, and government efficiency

Old and Young Politicians *

Abstract We evaluate the effect of a politician's age on political governance, reelection rates, and policies using data on Italian local governments. Our results suggest that younger politicians are more likely to behave strategically in response to election incentives: they increase spending and obtain more transfers from higher levels of government in preelection years. We argue that is a sign of stronger career concerns incentives. The results are robust to adopting three different identification strategies: fixed-effects regression, standard regression discontinuity design, and an augmented regression discontinuity design that controls for residual heterogeneity. JEL codes: C21, D78, H72, H77, J18