There has been a phenomenal global increase in the proportion of women in politics in the last 20 years. While there is evidence that raising the share of women politicians has substantive impacts on the composition of government spending, there is scarcely any evidence of how it influences...

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...

Markets work best when the rules of the game are stable, property rights are secure and contracts are observed. These conditions are promoted by the rule of law in the classical liberal sense of the supremacy of general laws over public and private authority. Devices such as mixed government and...