This paper attempts to evaluate municipality secession in terms of the median voter response on the executive local elections. Our results imply that incumbents in the new municipalities have a higher chance of reelection which suggests that the median voter approved the secession process....

This paper investigates the causes of municipalities secession in Brazil. We develop a model where the median voter decides on the creation of new municipalities observing the trade-off between loss of scale on public production and increase in federal transfers to his/her municipality. Voters...

In this paper we show a model where fiscal responsibility laws, by reducing the ability of politicians to use public resources for personal gains, can lead to an increase in the supply of public goods. We test this conjecture using data from Brazilian municipalities. As a nationwide...

This study documents how the presence of a woman in an executive political role affects the gender stereotype of women in politics. We use Brazilian electoral data and restrict our focus to close mayoral races (using an RDD design) in which the top two candidates are of opposite sexes. Our most...