Female presence in local government and cost efficiency: the case of Italian municipalities

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.