Suchergebnisse

We study how electoral systems affect the presence of women in politics using a model in which both voters and parties might have a gender bias. We apply the model to Spanish municipal elections, in which national law mandates that municipalities follow one of two different electoral systems: a closed-list system in which voters pick one party-list, or an open-list system, in which voters pick individual candidates. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the closed-list system increases the share of women among candidates and councilors by 2.5 percentage points, and the share of women among mayors by 4.3 percentage points. Our model explains these results as mostly driven by voter bias against women. We provide evidence that supports the mechanism of the model. In particular, we show that, when two councilors almost tied in general-election votes, the one with "one more vote" is substantially more likely to be appointed mayor, but this does not happen when the most voted was female and the second was male, suggesting the presence of some voter bias. We also show that, in a subsample of municipalities with low bias — proxied by having had a female mayor in the past — the difference between the two electoral systems disappears.

This paper analyzes the sustainability of intergenerational transfers in politico-economic equilibrium. Embedding electoral competition for the votes of old and young households in the standard Diamond (1965) OLG model, we find that intergenerational transfers naturally arise in a Markov perfect equilibrium, even in the absence of altruism, commitment, or trigger strategies. Not internalizing the negative effects of transfers for future generations, the political process partially resolves the distributive conflict between old and young voters by shifting some of the cost of social security to the unborn. As a consequence, transfers in politico-economic equilibrium are higher than what is socially optimal. Standard functional form assumptions yield closed-form solutions for the politico-economic equilibrium as well as the equilibrium supported by the Ramsey policy. The model predicts population ageing to lead to larger social security systems, but eventually lower benefits per retiree. Under realistic parameter values, it predicts a social-security tax rate close to the actual one, but higher than the Ramsey tax rate. Closed-form solutions for the case with endogenous labor supply, tax distortions, and multiple policy instruments prove the results to be robust.