Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Economics
First Advisor
Pande, Rohini
Abstract
Chapter 1: Gender quotas and strategic voters: Experimental evidence from Chile’s constitutional convention Citizens’ perceptions of certain groups influence voting behavior and policy choices worldwide, frequently reducing the representation of historically disadvantaged people. Can laws limiting the group identity of elected officials undo these effects? And if so, how does this impact legislator competence and how legislatures represent policy preferences of different groups? I examine these issues in the context of Chile’s constitutional conventional election, which was the first election to mandate gender parity in both candidate lists and elected officials without limiting voter choice. I induce experimental variation in voter awareness of these mandates by randomizing an electoral booth-level voter information campaign. In treated booths, voters were informed that gender parity for elected officials would be enforced. I have three experimental results. First, treatment increased women’s average vote share by 1%. Second, voters in treated booths voted for the gender they believed would be electorally favored by the mandate. This effect varied by electoral coalitions and was concentrated among front-runners. I show that the effects are large enough to influence outcomes in close elections. Third, treatment reduced votes for less competent men as measured by test scores. Finally, data on individual bills indicate that elected female legislatorsvoted more liberally on social issues such as abortion and domestic violence. In contrast, there are no gender-based voting differences for economic and administrative bills. Overall, these findings support the use of electoral mandates as a coordinating device that, when well-designed, can increase the average legislator’s competence and the extent to which policy-making processes reflect voter preferences. Chapter 2: Selection into Politics: Evidence from Gender Quotas Can democracies increase female representation without jeopardizing desirable qualities of politicians, such as competence and socioeconomic representation? This paper examines how gender influences the selection of candidates. By analyzing thesupply and demand for candidates and elected officials, as well as the impact of a gender quota on the characteristics of candidates by gender, I provide suggestive evidence for the existing barriers to increasing female representation. I study these questions in the context of a gender quota for congress in Chile. From the demand’s perspective, parties respond to a candidate gender quota by placing more women in districts where the party performs poorly, thereby limiting female representation. From the candidates’ side, before the gender quota, candidates and elected officials had higher test scores and came from more privileged backgrounds than the general population. However, female test scores were significantly higher. After the quota was implemented, the gender gap in candidates’ test scores disappeared, but the gender gap in favor of women persists among elected candidates, consistent with women facing a higher bar.
Recommended Citation
Paredes-Haz, Antonia, "Essays on Political Economy and Gender" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 924.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/924
