Research on the economic backgrounds of politicians is once again flourishing in political
science. In this article, we describe the economic characteristics that scholars have recently …

We provide a model of self-selection by candidates in a probabilistic voting environment to
shed light on the forces shaping the quality of politicians from both the supply and demand …

Since the start of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the relationship between national
women leaders and their effectiveness in handling the COVID-19 crisis has received much …

We complement the literature on distributive politics by taking a systematic look at regional
favoritism in a large and diverse sample of countries and by employing a broad measure …

It is one of the most pressing and controversial questions of our time--vehemently debated,
steeped in ideology, profoundly divisive. Who should be allowed to immigrate and who not …

Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation?
Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the …

We study the effect of women's public leadership in times of crisis. We use a regression
discontinuity design in close mayoral races between male and female candidates to …

The history of political events is made by people. It doesn't exist without us. From wars to
elections to political protests, the choices we make, our actions, how we behave, dictate …

We analyze close elections between male and female mayoral candidates in Brazilian
municipalities to provide novel evidence on the role of women as policymakers. Using an …

We study ethnic favoritism in a global sample and rely on nighttime light intensity to capture
a broad range of preferential policies targeted towards the political leaders' ethnic …