Women in politics: effects of electing mayors on the public finances of Brazilian municipalities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55532/1806-8944.2022.184Keywords:
Elections, Women, RDD, Public Finance, Social ExpenditureAbstract
This paper investigates what is the effect on Brazilian municipal public finances of electing women to the position of head of the local executive branch. By performing a Discontinuous Regression Design (RDD), the results indicated that there is no effect of elected women on municipal fiscal balance. However, the findings point towards personnel and social expenditures. As a mechanism, the paper identifies that there is a greater hiring of education and health professionals as a result of the election of Women Mayors. These results were robust to other specifications and placebo tests. The article brings contributions to the fiscal literature, especially the Brazilian one, as well as enhances research that studies gender differences and its various effects on the social environment.
References
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Bagues, Manuel, e Pamela Campa. 2021. “Can gender quotas in candidate lists empower women?
Evidence from a regression discontinuity design.” Journal of Public Economics, 194: 104315.
Baltrunaite, Audinga, Alessandra Casarico, Paola Profeta, e Giulia Savio. 2019. “Let the voters
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Baskaran, Thushyanthan, e Zohal Hessami. 2018. “Does the Election of a Female Leader Clear the
Way for More Women in Politics?” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(3): 95–121.
Baskaran, Thushyanthan, e Zohal Hessami. 2019. “Competitively Elected Women as Policy Makers.”
CESifo CESifo Working Paper Series 8005.
Beaman, Lori, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande, e Petia Topalova. 2012. “Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India.” Science, 335(6068):
582–586.
Besley, Timothy. 2005. “Political Selection.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(3): 43–60.
Besley, Timothy, e Stephen Coate. 1997. “An Economic Model of Representative Democracy.” The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(1): 85–114.
42
Bhalotra, Sonia, e Irma Clots-Figueras. 2014. “Health and the Political Agency of Women.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(2): 164–97.
Bhalotra, Sonia, Irma Clots-Figueras, e Lakshmi Iyer. 2018. “Pathbreakers? Women’s Electoral Success and Future Political Participation.” The Economic Journal, 128(613): 1844–1878.
Bowles, Hannah Riley, Linda Babcock, e Kathleen L McGinn. 2005. “Constraints and triggers: situational mechanics of gender in negotiation.” Journal of personality and social psychology, 89(6): 951.
Brollo, Fernanda, e Ugo Troiano. 2016. “What happens when a woman wins an election? Evidence
from close races in Brazil.” Journal of Development Economics, 122: 28–45.
Bruce, Raphael, Alexsandros Cavgias, Luis Meloni, e Mário Remígio. 2022. “Under pressure: Women’s leadership during the COVID-19 crisis.” Journal of Development Economics, 102761.
Busse, Matthias, e Carsten Hefeker. 2007. “Political risk, institutions and foreign direct investment.”
European Journal of Political Economy, 23(2): 397–415.
Calonico, Sebastian, Matias D Cattaneo, e Max H Farrell. 2019. “Optimal bandwidth choice for
robust bias-corrected inference in regression discontinuity designs.” The Econometrics Journal, 23(2):
192–210.
Calonico, Sebastian, Matias D. Cattaneo, Max H. Farrell, e Rocío Titiunik. 2019. “Regression Discontinuity Designs Using Covariates.” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 101(3): 442–451.
Casarico, Alessandra, Salvatore Lattanzio, e Paola Profeta. 2021. “Women and local public finance.”
European Journal of Political Economy, 102096.
Cattaneo, Matias D., Michael Jansson, e Xinwei Ma. 2020. “Simple Local Polynomial Density Estimators.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 115(531): 1449–1455.
Cattaneo, Matias D., Nicolás Idrobo, e Rocío Titiunik. 2020. A Practical Introduction to Regression
Discontinuity Designs: Foundations. Elements in Quantitative and Computational Methods for the
Social Sciences, Cambridge University Press.
Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, eEstherDuflo. 2004.“WomenasPolicyMakers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India.” Econometrica, 72(5): 1409–1443.
43
Revista Cadernos de Finanças Públicas, Brasília, Volume 02, p. 1-45, 2022
Clots-Figueras, Irma. 2011. “Women in politics: Evidence from the Indian States.” Journal of Public
Economics, 95(7): 664–690.
Clots-Figueras, Irma. 2012. “Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 4(1): 212–44. Cunningham, Scott. 2021. Causal Inference:
The Mixtape. Yale University Press.
de la Cuesta, Brandon, e Kosuke Imai. 2016. “Misunderstandings About the Regression Discontinuity Design in the Study of Close Elections.” Annual Review of Political Science, 19(1): 375–396.
Detraz, Nicole, e Dursun Peksen. 2018. ““Women Friendly” Spending? Welfare Spending and Women’s Participation in the Economy and Politics.” Politics and Gender, 14(2): 137–161.
Dollar, David, Raymond Fisman, e Roberta Gatti. 2001. “Are women really the “fairer” sex? Corruption and women in government.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 46(4): 423–429.
Downs, Anthony. 1957. “An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy.” Journal of Political
Economy, 65(2): 135–150.
Eggers, Andrew C., Ronny Freier, Veronica Grembi, e Tommaso Nannicini. 2018. “Regression Discontinuity Designs Based on Population Thresholds: Pitfalls and Solutions.” American Journal of Political Science, 62(1): 210–229.
Ferreira, Fernando, e Joseph Gyourko. 2014. “Does gender matter for political leadership? The case
of U.S. mayors.” Journal of Public Economics, 112: 24–39.
Fox, Richard L., e Jennifer L. Lawless. 2004. “Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run
for Office.” American Journal of Political Science, 48(2): 264–280.
Fujiwara, Thomas. 2011. “A Regression Discontinuity Test of Strategic Voting and Duverger’s Law.”
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 6(3–4): 197–233.
Funk, Patricia, e Christina Gathmann. 2014. “Gender gaps in policy making: evidence from direct
democracy in Switzerland.” Economic Policy, 30(81): 141–181.
Garikipati, Supriya, e Uma Kambhampati. 2021. “Leading the Fight Against the Pandemic: Does
Gender Really Matter?” Feminist Economics, 27(1-2): 401–418.
44
Geys, Benny, e Rune J. Sørensen. 2019. “The impact of women above the political glass ceiling: Evidence from a Norwegian executive gender quota reform.” Electoral Studies, 60: 102050.
Gilardi, Fabrizio. 2015. “The Temporary Importance of Role Models for Women’s Political Representation.” American Journal of Political Science, 59(4): 957–970.
Gonzalez-Eiras, Martín, e Carlos Sanz. 2021. “Women representation in politics: The effect of electoral systems.” Journal of Public Economics, 198: 104399.
Gonzalez, Robert M. 2021. “Cell Phone Access and Election Fraud: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design in Afghanistan.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 13(2):
1–51.
Gouvêa, Raphael, e Daniele Girardi. 2021. “Partisanship and local fiscal policy: Evidence from Brazilian cities.” Journal of Development Economics, 150: 102637.
Gummerson, Elizabeth, e Daniel Schneider. 2012. “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman: Gender, Income Shareand Household Expenditure in South Africa.” Social Forces, 91(3):813–836.
Hahn, Jinyong, Petra Todd, e Wilbert Van der Klaauw. 2001. “Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design.” Econometrica, 69(1): 201–209.
Hessami, Zohal, e Mariana Lopes da Fonseca. 2020. “Female political representation and substantive
effects on policies: A literature review.” European Journal of Political Economy, 63: 101896.
Hyytinen, Ari, Jaakko Meriläinen, Tuukka Saarimaa, Otto Toivanen, e Janne Tukiainen. 2018.
“When does regression discontinuity design work? Evidence from random election outcomes.” Quantitative Economics, 9(2): 1019–1051.
Júlio, Paulo, e José Tavares. 2017. “The Good, the Bad and the Different: Can Gender Quotas Raise
the Quality of Politicians?” Economica, 84(335): 454–479.
Kumar, Jha Chandan, e Sudipta Sarangi. 2018. “Women and corruption: What positions must they
hold to make a difference?” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 151: 219–233.
Kunovich, Sheri, e Pamela Paxton. 2005. “Pathways to Power: The Role of Political Parties in Women’s National Political Representation.” American Journal of Sociology, 111(2): 505–552.
45
Revista Cadernos de Finanças Públicas, Brasília, Volume 02, p. 1-45, 2022
Lee, David S., Enrico Moretti, e Matthew J. Butler. 2004. “Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House*.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3): 807– 859.
Lippmann, Quentin. 2020. “Gender and Lawmaking in Times of Quotas.” Available at SSRN 3330617.
McCrary, Justin. 2008. “Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design:
A density test.” Journal of Econometrics, 142(2): 698–714. The regression discontinuity design: Theory
and applications.
Meyersson, Erik. 2014. “Islamic Rule and the Empowerment of the Poor and Pious.” Econometrica,
82(1): 229–269.
Persson, Torsten, Gérard Roland, e Guido Tabellini. 2000. “Comparative Politics and Public Finance.” Journal of Political Economy, 108(6): 1121–1161.
Preston, Ian. 2014. “The Effect of Immigration on Public Finances.” The Economic Journal, 124(580):
F569–F592.
Rocha, Fabiana, Veronica Ines Fernandez Orellano, e Karina Bugarin. 2018. “Electedina close race:
Mayor’s characteristics and local public finances.” EconomiA, 19(2): 149–163.
Schwindt-Bayer, Leslie A. 2010. “Comparison and Integration: A Path toward a Comparative Politics
of Gender.” Perspectives on Politics, 8(1): 177–182.
Sergent, Kayla, e Alexander D. Stajkovic. 2020. “Women’s leadership is associated with fewer deaths
during the COVID-19 crisis: Quantitative and qualitative analyses of United States governors.” The
Journal of applied psychology, 105(8): 771–783. Place: United States.
SOF. 2020. “Manual Técnico de Orçamento - MTO - 14ª Edição - Secretaria de Orçamento Federal.”
[Online; accessed 25-novembro-2020].
Stevens, Anne. 2007. Women, power and politics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Swamy, Anand, Stephen Knack, Young Lee, e Omar Azfar. 2001. “Gender and corruption.” Journal
of Development Economics, 64(1): 25–55
Alesina, Alberto, e Guido Tabellini. 1987. “Rules and Discretion with Noncoordinated Monetary
and Fiscal Policies.” Economic Inquiry, 25(4): 619–630. _eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/
pdf/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1987.tb00764.x.
Angrist, Joshua D., e Jörn-Steffen, Pischke. 2008. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s
Companion. Princeton University Press.
Angrist, Joshua D., e Jörn-Steffen, Pischke 2010. “The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design Is Taking the Con out of Econometrics.” Journal of Economic
Perspectives, 24(2): 3–30.
Bagues, Manuel, e Pamela Campa. 2021. “Can gender quotas in candidate lists empower women?
Evidence from a regression discontinuity design.” Journal of Public Economics, 194: 104315.
Baltrunaite, Audinga, Alessandra Casarico, Paola Profeta, e Giulia Savio. 2019. “Let the voters
choose women.” Journal of Public Economics, 180: 104085.
Baskaran, Thushyanthan, e Zohal Hessami. 2018. “Does the Election of a Female Leader Clear the
Way for More Women in Politics?” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(3): 95–121.
Baskaran, Thushyanthan, e Zohal Hessami. 2019. “Competitively Elected Women as Policy Makers.”
CESifo CESifo Working Paper Series 8005.
Beaman, Lori, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande, e Petia Topalova. 2012. “Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India.” Science, 335(6068):
582–586.
Besley, Timothy. 2005. “Political Selection.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(3): 43–60.
Besley, Timothy, e Stephen Coate. 1997. “An Economic Model of Representative Democracy.” The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(1): 85–114.
42
Bhalotra, Sonia, e Irma Clots-Figueras. 2014. “Health and the Political Agency of Women.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(2): 164–97.
Bhalotra, Sonia, Irma Clots-Figueras, e Lakshmi Iyer. 2018. “Pathbreakers? Women’s Electoral Success and Future Political Participation.” The Economic Journal, 128(613): 1844–1878.
Bowles, Hannah Riley, Linda Babcock, e Kathleen L McGinn. 2005. “Constraints and triggers: situational mechanics of gender in negotiation.” Journal of personality and social psychology, 89(6): 951.
Brollo, Fernanda, e Ugo Troiano. 2016. “What happens when a woman wins an election? Evidence
from close races in Brazil.” Journal of Development Economics, 122: 28–45.
Bruce, Raphael, Alexsandros Cavgias, Luis Meloni, e Mário Remígio. 2022. “Under pressure: Women’s leadership during the COVID-19 crisis.” Journal of Development Economics, 102761.
Busse, Matthias, e Carsten Hefeker. 2007. “Political risk, institutions and foreign direct investment.”
European Journal of Political Economy, 23(2): 397–415.
Calonico, Sebastian, Matias D Cattaneo, e Max H Farrell. 2019. “Optimal bandwidth choice for
robust bias-corrected inference in regression discontinuity designs.” The Econometrics Journal, 23(2):
192–210.
Calonico, Sebastian, Matias D. Cattaneo, Max H. Farrell, e Rocío Titiunik. 2019. “Regression Discontinuity Designs Using Covariates.” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 101(3): 442–451.
Casarico, Alessandra, Salvatore Lattanzio, e Paola Profeta. 2021. “Women and local public finance.”
European Journal of Political Economy, 102096.
Cattaneo, Matias D., Michael Jansson, e Xinwei Ma. 2020. “Simple Local Polynomial Density Estimators.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 115(531): 1449–1455.
Cattaneo, Matias D., Nicolás Idrobo, e Rocío Titiunik. 2020. A Practical Introduction to Regression
Discontinuity Designs: Foundations. Elements in Quantitative and Computational Methods for the
Social Sciences, Cambridge University Press.
Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, eEstherDuflo. 2004.“WomenasPolicyMakers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India.” Econometrica, 72(5): 1409–1443.
43
Revista Cadernos de Finanças Públicas, Brasília, Volume 02, p. 1-45, 2022
Clots-Figueras, Irma. 2011. “Women in politics: Evidence from the Indian States.” Journal of Public
Economics, 95(7): 664–690.
Clots-Figueras, Irma. 2012. “Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 4(1): 212–44. Cunningham, Scott. 2021. Causal Inference:
The Mixtape. Yale University Press.
de la Cuesta, Brandon, e Kosuke Imai. 2016. “Misunderstandings About the Regression Discontinuity Design in the Study of Close Elections.” Annual Review of Political Science, 19(1): 375–396.
Detraz, Nicole, e Dursun Peksen. 2018. ““Women Friendly” Spending? Welfare Spending and Women’s Participation in the Economy and Politics.” Politics and Gender, 14(2): 137–161.
Dollar, David, Raymond Fisman, e Roberta Gatti. 2001. “Are women really the “fairer” sex? Corruption and women in government.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 46(4): 423–429.
Downs, Anthony. 1957. “An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy.” Journal of Political
Economy, 65(2): 135–150.
Eggers, Andrew C., Ronny Freier, Veronica Grembi, e Tommaso Nannicini. 2018. “Regression Discontinuity Designs Based on Population Thresholds: Pitfalls and Solutions.” American Journal of Political Science, 62(1): 210–229.
Ferreira, Fernando, e Joseph Gyourko. 2014. “Does gender matter for political leadership? The case
of U.S. mayors.” Journal of Public Economics, 112: 24–39.
Fox, Richard L., e Jennifer L. Lawless. 2004. “Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run
for Office.” American Journal of Political Science, 48(2): 264–280.
Fujiwara, Thomas. 2011. “A Regression Discontinuity Test of Strategic Voting and Duverger’s Law.”
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 6(3–4): 197–233.
Funk, Patricia, e Christina Gathmann. 2014. “Gender gaps in policy making: evidence from direct
democracy in Switzerland.” Economic Policy, 30(81): 141–181.
Garikipati, Supriya, e Uma Kambhampati. 2021. “Leading the Fight Against the Pandemic: Does
Gender Really Matter?” Feminist Economics, 27(1-2): 401–418.
44
Geys, Benny, e Rune J. Sørensen. 2019. “The impact of women above the political glass ceiling: Evidence from a Norwegian executive gender quota reform.” Electoral Studies, 60: 102050.
Gilardi, Fabrizio. 2015. “The Temporary Importance of Role Models for Women’s Political Representation.” American Journal of Political Science, 59(4): 957–970.
Gonzalez-Eiras, Martín, e Carlos Sanz. 2021. “Women representation in politics: The effect of electoral systems.” Journal of Public Economics, 198: 104399.
Gonzalez, Robert M. 2021. “Cell Phone Access and Election Fraud: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design in Afghanistan.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 13(2):
1–51.
Gouvêa, Raphael, e Daniele Girardi. 2021. “Partisanship and local fiscal policy: Evidence from Brazilian cities.” Journal of Development Economics, 150: 102637.
Gummerson, Elizabeth, e Daniel Schneider. 2012. “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman: Gender, Income Shareand Household Expenditure in South Africa.” Social Forces, 91(3):813–836.
Hahn, Jinyong, Petra Todd, e Wilbert Van der Klaauw. 2001. “Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design.” Econometrica, 69(1): 201–209.
Hessami, Zohal, e Mariana Lopes da Fonseca. 2020. “Female political representation and substantive
effects on policies: A literature review.” European Journal of Political Economy, 63: 101896.
Hyytinen, Ari, Jaakko Meriläinen, Tuukka Saarimaa, Otto Toivanen, e Janne Tukiainen. 2018.
“When does regression discontinuity design work? Evidence from random election outcomes.” Quantitative Economics, 9(2): 1019–1051.
Júlio, Paulo, e José Tavares. 2017. “The Good, the Bad and the Different: Can Gender Quotas Raise
the Quality of Politicians?” Economica, 84(335): 454–479.
Kumar, Jha Chandan, e Sudipta Sarangi. 2018. “Women and corruption: What positions must they
hold to make a difference?” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 151: 219–233.
Kunovich, Sheri, e Pamela Paxton. 2005. “Pathways to Power: The Role of Political Parties in Women’s National Political Representation.” American Journal of Sociology, 111(2): 505–552.
45
Revista Cadernos de Finanças Públicas, Brasília, Volume 02, p. 1-45, 2022
Lee, David S., Enrico Moretti, e Matthew J. Butler. 2004. “Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House*.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3): 807– 859.
Lippmann, Quentin. 2020. “Gender and Lawmaking in Times of Quotas.” Available at SSRN 3330617.
McCrary, Justin. 2008. “Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design:
A density test.” Journal of Econometrics, 142(2): 698–714. The regression discontinuity design: Theory
and applications.
Meyersson, Erik. 2014. “Islamic Rule and the Empowerment of the Poor and Pious.” Econometrica,
82(1): 229–269.
Persson, Torsten, Gérard Roland, e Guido Tabellini. 2000. “Comparative Politics and Public Finance.” Journal of Political Economy, 108(6): 1121–1161.
Preston, Ian. 2014. “The Effect of Immigration on Public Finances.” The Economic Journal, 124(580):
F569–F592.
Rocha, Fabiana, Veronica Ines Fernandez Orellano, e Karina Bugarin. 2018. “Electedina close race:
Mayor’s characteristics and local public finances.” EconomiA, 19(2): 149–163.
Schwindt-Bayer, Leslie A. 2010. “Comparison and Integration: A Path toward a Comparative Politics
of Gender.” Perspectives on Politics, 8(1): 177–182.
Sergent, Kayla, e Alexander D. Stajkovic. 2020. “Women’s leadership is associated with fewer deaths
during the COVID-19 crisis: Quantitative and qualitative analyses of United States governors.” The
Journal of applied psychology, 105(8): 771–783. Place: United States.
SOF. 2020. “Manual Técnico de Orçamento - MTO - 14ª Edição - Secretaria de Orçamento Federal.”
[Online; accessed 25-novembro-2020].
Stevens, Anne. 2007. Women, power and politics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Swamy, Anand, Stephen Knack, Young Lee, e Omar Azfar. 2001. “Gender and corruption.” Journal
of Development Economics, 64(1): 25–55
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Published
16-09-2022
How to Cite
Castro Soares, D. . (2022). Women in politics: effects of electing mayors on the public finances of Brazilian municipalities. CADERNOS DE FINANÇAS PÚBLICAS, 22(02). https://doi.org/10.55532/1806-8944.2022.184
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