Gender and urban fiscal governance: evidence from female leadership in Indian municipal corporations

Abstract

This study examines how female leadership shapes fiscal outcomes in India's Municipal Corporations, which, despite comprising only 5.5% of Urban Local Bodies, control 60-65% of aggregate municipal revenues. Integrating representative bureaucracy and fiscal federalism theories, we analyze a novel panel dataset of 201 corporations over 2018-2024-hand-curated leadership records and detailed budgets-supplemented by state-level aggregates from RBI reports (2022, 2024). Employing two-way fixed effects, instrumental variables, and Callaway-Sant'Anna staggered difference-indifferences , we find that female-led corporations expand total budgets by 15-20%, strengthen own-source revenue through enhanced tax and user-charge collection, and reallocate expenditures toward service delivery. Dynamic analysis reveals pronounced fiscal shifts within the first year of tenure. The findings provide the first evidence of gendered fiscal dynamics in Indian cities and carry direct implications for gender-responsive reforms in urban public finance. Findings also inform policy prescriptions, namely, strengthening mayoral authority, synchronizing tenures with budget cycles, and embedding gender-responsive performance metrics in intergovernmental transfers.