This paper investigates the reasons behind the low representation of women among legislators. Using data from Spain, we find that parties tend to nominate female candidates to poorer positions on the ballot. We examine whether this is due to voter bias or party bias, and find two pieces of...

It is well known that incumbent politicians tend to receive more votes when economic conditions are good. In this paper we explore the source of this correlation, exploiting the exceptional evidence provided by the Spanish Christmas Lottery. This is a unique lottery: 75% of Spaniards play,...

This paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters. We make use of the unique evidence provided by Spanish public examinations, where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random. We analyse how the chances of success of 150,000 female and male...

This paper investigates the potential existence of a gender bias in political parties-nomination strategies. For this purpose we use data from elections to the Spanish Senate, where candidates are listed in the ballot in alphabetical order, and order in the ballot a¤ects votes. The evidence in...

This paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters. We make use of the exceptional evidence provided by Spanish public examinations, where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random. We analyze how the chances of success of 150,000 male and...

This paper argues that sex discrimination is an inefficient practice. We model sex discrimination as the complete exclusion of females from the labor market or as the exclusion of females from managerial positions. The former implies a reduction in GDP per capita; the latter distorts the...