Replication files for "Managing migration: Female mayors and the intake of refugees"

Replication package for the paper "Managing migration: Female mayors and the intake of refugees" by Sebastian Schirner.

This paper studies whether political leaders’ gender matters for crisis management. I examine
female mayors in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia during the intake of Ukrainian
refugees in 2022/23. I use granular data on fulfillment of the municipal refugee allocation quota
and 2020 municipal election data. I use a two-way fixed effects specification to compare quota
fulfillment of female and male mayors before and after the intake of Ukrainian refugees. I supplement this
approach by using close mixed-gender mayorship races. Female mayors fulfill the
allocation quota less than male mayors in response to the crisis. This difference is not driven by
mayor or municipality characteristics. Instead, electoral competition is a plausible mechanism for
female mayors’ lower quota fulfillment.