This paper evaluates the impacts of increasing female representation in Bolivian municipal councils on public policy choices and welfare outcomes. By combining detailed administrative panel data on municipal expenditures and revenues together with electoral data, an innovative regression...

The development of institutions of self-governance in India, and specifically the 2005 reform - the National Rural Health Mission that introduced village health and sanitation committees - provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of the strengthening of the political agency on...