Are Educated Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India

Does Empowering Women in Politics Boost Human Development? An Empirical Analysis, 1960–2018

“…Indeed, there seems to be a great deal of heterogeneity even within democracies when it comes to the provision of public goods, generally unrelated to the general quality of governance. Even when educated leaders are elected to office, micro-level evidence from India suggests that education improves only in the instance of wealthier states, not in the poorer states where better educational outcomes are most needed (Lahoti and Sahoo 2019). Can the difference in outcomes, then, be explained by the differing ways in which women, who make up large majorities of populations, are empowered to influence the political system?…”

Effect of Political Quotas on Candidate Attributes and the Provision of Public Goods

“…As mentioned in (Besley, 2005;Akerlof and Kranton, 2000) a politician has many characteristics that identify him and determine his quality. Characteristics such as criminality and level of education of politicians has also been observed to affect development (Prakash et al, 2014;Chemin, 2012;Gehring et al, 2015;Besley et al, 2011;Lahoti and Sahoo, 2017). Character of the politician is important for political selection of the candidate as well (Besley et al, 2005;Bernheim and Kartik, 2014).…”

“…Some evidence exist for election of criminal politicians affecting development negatively(Prakash et al, 2014;Chemin, 2012), under utilization of development funds, and who have lower attendance rates in meetings(Gehring et al, 2015). Educated leaders can contribute to higher growth(Besley et al, 2011) but may not affect education outcomes(Lahoti and Sahoo, 2017).5 The literature has found different effect of quotas for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe. For example, Chin and Prakash (2011) find no impact on poverty when the number of assembly constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes in a state increases, but do find a decrease in poverty on increasing the share of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe.…”

Role of Professionalism in the Policy Response to COVID-19: Does a Public Health or Medical Background Help?

“…First, we offer novel evidence of how officials' backgrounds influence their competence in leading efforts to respond to a major public health crisis. Existing studies have mostly focused on the roles of officials' gender, age, and educational attainment (10, [17][18][19]. Second, we add to the literature on the determinants of virus transmission.…”

“…Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) was first reported in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, China, in early December 2019. It then spread rapidly within China and worldwide, becoming a pandemic and bringing about devastating consequences (1).…”