This paper documents an important but mostly overlooked reason for female underrepresentation in politics: gender gaps in the recontest likelihood of candidates. Using hand-collected data on 116,185 candidates in four consecutive local council elections (2001-2016) in a German state, we provide...

In 2001, the state parliament of the German federal state of Hesse abolished a 5 percent legal electoral threshold for local elections. This reform had a stronger effect on municipalities with larger councils because implicit electoral thresholds decrease with council size. Exploiting...

There has been a phenomenal global increase in the proportion of women in politics in the last two decades, but there is no evidence of how this influences economic performance. We investigate this using data on competitive elections to India's state assemblies, leveraging close elections to...

While still far from parity, female representation in politics has continuously increased over the last two decades worldwide. In light of this development, we analyze whether higher female representation has substantive effects on policy choices using the example of child care – a public good...

This paper documents an important but mostly overlooked reason for female underrepresentation in politics: gender gaps in the recontest likelihood of candidates. Using hand-collected data on 116,185 candidates in four consecutive local council elections (2001-2016) in a German state, we provide...