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American Economic Review Vol. 107 No. 8 2017

Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden

Timothy Besley1; Olle Folke2; Torsten Persson3; Johanna Rickne4

1 Department of Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom, and CIFAR (email: ) · 2 Department of Government, Uppsala University, Box 514, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden, and UCLS (email: ) · 3 IIES, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden, and CIFAR (email: ) · 4 SOFI, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden, IFN, and UCLS (email: )

open access

Abstract

We develop a model where party leaders choose the competence of politicians on the ballot to trade off electoral success against their own survival. The predicted correlation between the competence of party leaders and followers is strongly supported in Swedish data. We use a novel approach, based on register data for the earnings of the whole population, to measure the competence of all politicians in 7 parties, 290 municipalities, and 10 elections (for the period 1982–2014). We ask how competence was affected by a zipper quota, requiring local parties to alternate men and women on the ballot, implemented by the Social Democratic Party in 1993. Far from being at odds with meritocracy, this quota raised the competence of male politicians where it raised female representation the most. We argue that resignation of mediocre male leaders was a key driver of this effect.

DOI
10.1257/aer.20160080
Volume
107
Issue
8
Pages
2204-2242
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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