Policy Experiment"
BY: RAGHABENDRA CHATTOPADHYAY
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
ESTHER DUFLO
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Department of Economics
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=288974
Other Electronic Document Delivery:
SSRN only offers technical support for papers
downloaded from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection
location. When URLs wrap, you must copy and paste
them into your browser eliminating all spaces.
Paper ID: MIT Department of Economics Working Paper No. 01-35
Date: October 2001
Contact: ESTHER DUFLO
Email: Mailto:Eduflo at mit.edu
Postal: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Department of Economics
E52-252g
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142 USA
Co-Auth: RAGHABENDRA CHATTOPADHYAY
Email: Mailto:rc at iimcal.ac.in
Postal: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
Post Box - 16757
P.O. Alipore
Calcutta -700027, INDIA
ABSTRACT:
This paper uses political reservations for women in India to
study the impact of women's leadership on policy decision. In
1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils
in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a
woman: in these councils only women could be elected to the
position of head. Village Councils are responsible for the
provision of many local public goods in rural areas. Using a
data set we collected on 165 Village Councils, we compare the
type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved
Villages Councils. We show that women invest more in
infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of rural
women (water, fuel, and roads), while men invest more in
education. Women are more likely to participate in the
policy-making process if the leader of their village council is
a woman.
Keywords: gender, decentralization, affirmative action,
political economy