Does the balance matter? The gender within government and municipal indebtedness

Roberto Cabaleiro and Enrique Buch

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, 2024, vol. 36, issue 4, 536-560

Abstract: Purpose - It was to investigate whether gender diversity – gender balance – within political municipal government teams affected the municipal indebtedness. Government ideology, the gender of the mayor and the wealth of the municipal environment were considered as moderators. Design/methodology/approach - We used GMM estimators on two dynamic models and a sample of 144 Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants for the period 2013–2022. Findings - Gender diversity within government teams reduces the municipal debt. Furthermore, the government right-wing ideology and the female gender of the mayor are robust moderators of the effects of the gender diversity within government teams on institutional indebtedness. Research limitations/implications - The differences in financial autonomy and powers to apply public policies by municipalities in the different countries, as well as some differential aspects within the right-wing ideological spectrum, may condition our findings. Within relational demography, gender diversity impacts municipal performance, opening the way to explore other relations in future research. Practical implications - The tendency to implement legislation to try to achieve high gender balances within political decision-making bodies generates higher gender diversity, and our research shows that it leads to a better financial performance, a matter of transcendental importance for EU, credit rating agencies, and lenders. Originality/value - This study provides new knowledge about the effect of gender within political decision-making bodies on municipal budgetary management. It is the first research analysing the impact of gender balance in the strict sense within decision-making bodies on municipal indebtedness.

Keywords: Debt; Gender; Diversity; Municipalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
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:eme:jpbafm:jpbafm-01-2024-0003

DOI: 10.1108/JPBAFM-01-2024-0003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management is currently edited by Dr Giuseppe Grossi

More articles in Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().