Women Legislators and Economic Performance

Thushyanthan Baskaran, Sonia Bhalotra, Brian Min () and Yogesh Uppal ()
Additional contact information
Brian Min: University of Michigan
Yogesh Uppal: Youngstown State University

No 11596, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: There has been a phenomenal global increase in the proportion of women in politics in the last two decades, but there is no evidence of how this influences economic performance. We investigate this using data on competitive elections to India's state assemblies, leveraging close elections to isolate causal effects. We find significantly higher growth in economic activity in constituencies that elect women and no evidence of negative spillovers to neighbouring male-led constituencies, consistent with net growth. Probing mechanisms, we find that women legislators are less likely to be criminal and corrupt, more efficacious, and less vulnerable to political opportunism.

Keywords: political representation; roads; economic growth; luminosity; women legislators; corruption; gender; India; identity; close elections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 H44 H73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Published - revised version published in: Journal of Economic Growth, 2024, 29, 151–214

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11596.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Women legislators and economic performance (2024)
Working Paper: Women Legislators and Economic Performance (2021)
Working Paper: Women Legislators and Economic Performance (2021)
Working Paper: Women Legislators and Economic Performance (2021)
Working Paper: Women legislators and economic performance (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11596

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().