Female parliamentarians and economic growth: evidence from a large panel

Abstract

This article investigates whether female political representation affects economic growth. Panel estimates for 119 democracies using fixed-effects specifications and a system generalized method of moments approach suggest that, over recent decades, countries with higher shares of women in parliament have had faster growing economies.

Keywords:

• gender
• economic growth
• female representation
• parliament

JEL Classification:

• D72
• J16
• O11
• O43

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for useful comments from Prema-Chandra Athukorala, Stephen Howes and Shuhei Nishitateno. Any errors are the authors' own.

Notes

¹ We use the xtabond2 command of Roodman (2009a).

² In unreported specifications using additional instrument lags and uncollapsed instruments we observe high Hansen J test p-values – a symptom of over-instrumenting (Roodman 2009b).

³ The regressions in columns 1, 5 and 6 of Table 2 are the best specified as the Hansen J test values are insignificant and there is AR(1) but not AR(2) in first differences.

⁴ Available on request.