Askill Harkjerr Halse defended his thesis "A woman's touch: The impact of gender on political priorities" at the University of Oslo in 2009, and received an ESOP scholarship for his work. His thesis is available here.
The jury's justification:
This thesis addresses an interesting and important question: Does the gender of political representatives affect policy outcomes? More specifically, does increased participation of women in politics lead to more public spending on activities and services preferred by women?
To answer this question Halse considers spending data for all Norwegian municipalities during the period 1972‐1999. Controlling for a number of other variables, he finds a small but precisely estimated association between female shares in municipality councils and spending on child care. While it is relatively straightforward to measure the association between gender shares and spending, it is far from trivial to make causality claims here. Halse is aware of this, and provides an insightful discussion of potential endogeneity problems. He uses an IV‐strategy in an attempt to overcome these problems.
A major strength of this thesis is that Halse presents, and to some extent, develops a theoretical framework that helps us think about preferences, gender and outcomes in politics. The thesis is well organized and very well written. In sum this is a master thesis of very high quality.
At a ceremony on November 7, Askill Harkjerr Halse was awarded NOK 25.000 for his work.
The evaluation committee consisted of Professor Karine Nyborg, ESOP, University of Oslo, and Professor Gaute Torsvik, University of Bergen.