Surveys across countries indicate that female politicians are more often targets of violence compared to males. Why are women attacked more? Is this due to their gender, or to correlated factors? We provide the first causal evidence that violence is driven by gender: leveraging 12 years of data...

Adequate wages are an important tool to shield public officials from special interests and corruption. But what is the equilibrium effect of higher wages in the presence of criminal pressure groups, who use both bribes and violence? By means of a regression discontinuity design, we show that an...