Peter Thiel was attacked for suggesting the women's suffrage led to increases in government spending in the US. However, if this paper is correct, the introduction of women's suffrage does not lead to increased total government spending. (Via @[15616116:2048:Robin Hanson])
"The economic literature has attributed part of the increase in government expenditure over the 20th century to female voting. This is puzzling, considering that the political science literature has documented that women tended to be more conservative than men over the first half of the 20th century. We argue that the current estimates of this relationship are afflicted by endogeneity bias. Using data for 46 countries and a novel set of instruments related to the diffusion of female suffrage across the globe, we find that, on average, the introduction of female suffrage did not increase either social expenditures or total government expenditure. "
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0939362517300948
"The economic literature has attributed part of the increase in government expenditure over the 20th century to female voting. This is puzzling, considering that the political science literature has documented that women tended to be more conservative than men over the first half of the 20th century. We argue that the current estimates of this relationship are afflicted by endogeneity bias. Using data for 46 countries and a novel set of instruments related to the diffusion of female suffrage across the globe, we find that, on average, the introduction of female suffrage did not increase either social expenditures or total government expenditure. "
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0939362517300948