Abstract: Do female and male candidates differ in their political campaigns? Do they adjust to their opponent´s gender? Using individual political platforms from legislative elections in France, I combine computational text analysis with a regression discontinuity design setup in the two-round French legislative elections to understand political platform content differences between women and men. I find that women present themselves closer to the party line and give more salience to topics such as security and foreign policy. This is a strategic response, as I causally determine that when women run against a man, as opposed to a woman, they give more prevalence to male-stereotypical topics. However, once elected, women address issues like health and education compared to male colleagues. In contrast, when male politicians run against women, they adapt their platforms more marginally.
(Job Market Paper)with José Tavares
Abstract: School closures and consolidation is a policy advocated in several OECD countries. This paper studies the impact of school closures on far-right votes in France between 1995 and 2022. Using a matched difference-in-differences design, we causally show that votes on the Rassemblement National increased by 0.713 percentage points in the first election in municipalities where the only school closed. This effect grows in the next three elections and reaches 1.818 percentage points. We show that voters leaving the municipality cannot explain this effect. However, we provide suggestive evidence that the increase was higher in places that initially voted more for the far-right. In municipalities with more than one school, an effect does not seem to exist, showing that citizens are concerned with the accessibility of public service. (Presentation)Work in Progress