Quality of Government and Women's Political Empowerment: Evidence from European Regions

Abstract This study examines the relationship between women's political empowerment and the quality of government in European regions. The analysis considers both the endogeneity of the quality of government and female empowerment, and their spatial interdependence. We use exogenous variation in pre‐industrial societal traits, legal origins, and geographic and climatic characteristics to construct instruments using Random Forest forecasting. To model interdependence across regions, we employ convex combinations of connectivity matrices based on geography, trade, social networks, and cultural links. Our findings show that women's political empowerment raises the quality of government, and that the quality of government also boosts female empowerment.