The Looks of a Winner: Beauty, Gender and Electoral Success

Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl and Panu Poutvaara

No 104, Ratio Working Papers from The Ratio Institute

Abstract: We study the role of beauty in politics. For the first time, focus is put on differences in how women and men evaluate female and male candidates and how different candidate traits relate to success in real and hypothetical elections. We have collected 16,218 assessments by 2,772 respondents of photos of 1,929 Finnish political candidates. Evaluations of beauty explain success in real elections better than evaluations of competence, intelli-gence, likability, or trustworthiness. The beauty premium is larger for female candidates, in contrast to findings in previous labor-market studies.

Keywords: Beauty; gender; elections; political candidates; beauty premium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J45 J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2006-09-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-lab and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in Journal of Public Economics, 2010, pages 8-15.

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Looks of a Winner: Beauty, Gender, and Electoral Success (2007)
Working Paper: The Looks of a Winner: Beauty, Gender and Electoral Success (2006)
Working Paper: The Looks of a Winner: Beauty, Gender and Electoral Success (2006)
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