Essays on Female Policymakers and Policy Outcomes

Abstract: The thesis consists of three papers, summarized as follows."Female Policymakers and Educational Expenditures: Cross-Country Evidence"This paper investigates the influence of women in politics on decision-making using public educational expenditures as the outcome of interest. The results suggest that an increase in the share of female legislators by one percentage point increases the ratio of educational expenditures to GDP by 0.028 percentage points. The effect of female legislators on educational policies is strengthened accounting for forms of government, but not influenced by left-wing government, electoral rules, parliamentary system and non-marriage. Moreover, this study supports the hypothesis that the identity of the legislator matters for policy."Women in Politics: A New Instrument for Studying the Impact of Education on Growth"This paper tests the growth model of distance to the technological frontier, which states that an economy closer to the technological frontier should invest more in skilled labor since innovation is a skill-intensive activity. In contrast to Vandenbussche, Aghion, and Meghir (henceforth VAM) (2006), I use the proportion of female legislators as an instrument for skilled labor, instead of lagged educational expenditures. The results with the new instrument are consistent with the theoretical prediction and the previous results of VAM (2006)."Do Gender Quotas Influence Women's Representation and Policies?"This paper investigates the effect of applying gender quotas on policy decisions. The results show that an increase in the share of female legislators by one percentage point increases the ratio of government expenditure on health and social welfare to GDP by 0.18 and 0.67 percentage points, respectively. The robustness check supports that the effect of quotas on female legislators is likely to be translated into the influence of female policymakers on social welfare.