Gender stereotypes in politics: what changes when a woman becomes the local political leader?

This study documents how the presence of a woman in an executive political role affects the gender stereotype of women in politics. We use Brazilian electoral data and restrict our focus to close mayoral races (using an RDD design) in which the top two candidates are of opposite sexes. Our most important result was a reduction in the number of candidates and votes for female mayoral candidates after a woman is elected, regardless of her eligibility status for reelection. This negative result is linked only to the position of mayor and not to other political positions (councilor, state or federal deputy). In addition, our results may be interpreted as evidence that voters do not use their update on women as local leaders to change their beliefs on women’s ability to run for other political positions. Finally, female mayors do not appear to have a role model effect on younger cohorts of women. We also note that our results are not influenced by differences in mayoral policies (generally and specifically for women), which could influence voters’ gender stereotypes.

The impact of property rights and its limits

The empirical evaluation of the effect of land property rights typically suffers from selection problems. The allocation of property rights across households is usually not random but based on wealth, family characteristics, political clientelism, or other mechanisms built on differences between the groups that acquire property rights and the groups that do not. In this paper, we address this selection concern exploiting a natural experiment in the allocation of property rights. Twenty years ago, a homogenous group of squatters occupied a piece of privately owned land in a suburban area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. When the Congress passed an expropriation law transferring the land from the former owners to the squatters, some of the former owners surrendered the land (and received a compensation), while others decide to sue in the slow Argentine courts. These different decisions by the former owners generated an allocation of property rights that is exogenous to the characteristics of the squatters. We take advantage of this natural experiment to evaluate the effect of the allocation of urban land property rights. Our preliminary results show significant effects on housing investment, household size, and school attrition. Contradicting De Soto's hypotheses, we found nonsignificant effects on labor income and access to credit markets.