Gender and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from COVID-19 Response

Juan Chauvin and Clemence Tricaud

No 32410, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on why men and women leaders make different choices. Exploiting Brazilian close elections, we show that female mayors responded differently to the COVID-19 crisis over the year 2020. Female mayors were less likely to close non-essential businesses early in the pandemic and female-led municipalities experienced higher mortality, while the reverse was true later on. We show that these findings can be rationalized by a simple political agency model in which politicians seek re-election and voters are gender biased. Consistent with this interpretation, the gender differences we find are driven exclusively by mayors facing re-election.

JEL-codes: D72 H11 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-inv and nep-pol
Note: POL
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