Gender and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Crisis Response
Working Paper 32410
DOI 10.3386/w32410
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This paper provides new evidence on why men and women leaders make different choices. We first show theoretically how voters’ gender bias can lead female politicians to undertake different policies. We then test the model’s predictions by exploring leaders’ responses to COVID-19. Exploiting Brazilian close elections, we find that, consistent with the model, female mayors were less likely to close non-essential businesses at first and that female-led municipalities experienced higher mortality, while the reverse was true later on. These results are exclusively driven by mayors facing reelection and are stronger in municipalities where voters’ bias is more likely to materialize.