Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/336243 
Year of Publication: 
2026
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 1712
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
Abstract: 
We study the role of mayoral gender in attracting public funding in Italian municipalities. We exploit a novel administrative dataset containing detailed information on all projects aimed at the digitalisation of local public administrations and funded under Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan between 2022 and 2024. Exogenous variation in the timing of municipal elections and switches from male to female mayors provides quasi-experimental identification within a staggered difference-in-differences framework. We find that female mayors attract significantly larger amounts of national public funding for the digitalisation of municipal administrative services. This effect is particularly strong when female leadership is combined with high levels of human, or supported by a high quality local bureaucrats, and a policy environment characterised by substantial funding opportunities. By contrast, the share of women in municipal councils and executives does not play a significant role. We also find that our main results are driven by small and territorially fragile municipalities.
Subjects: 
public funding
female political leadership
local governments
difference-in-differences
event-study
causal inference
JEL: 
D72
H72
H76
J16
R58
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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