Female presence in local government and cost efficiency: the case of Italian municipalities
基于意大利市镇面板数据，采用随机前沿模型发现，女性市长和更多女性议员能显著提升地方政府的成本效率，且该效应在意大利南北地区均成立。
This paper investigates how female presence in political institutions influences local governments’ cost efficiency, implementing a one-stage stochastic frontier model, based on a panel of Italian municipalities, with municipal fixed effects. The empirical results provide significant evidence for the presence of a gender effect in politics: higher efficiency is observed in municipalities with a female mayor and a greater presence of women in their councils. Further, the gender effect is confirmed taking into account the regional perspective, that is, the historic North–South Italian dualism, and performing several robustness checks. The empirical results support the usefulness of policies aimed at favouring female empowerment and at promoting gender equality in politics.