Women's political representation and Foreign Direct Investment into Autocracies

Although globalization has coincided with rising women's descriptive political representation around the world, less is known about how women in political office shape international economic outcomes. This paper investigates the impact of women’s descriptive representation on inward foreign direct investment (FDI). Leveraging panel data from 178 countries (1966–2023), project-level FDI data (2003-2023), and firm survey data on investor perceptions, I test conjectures about the impact of women politicians on FDI attraction. I find that women's descriptive representation boosts FDI into autocracies, while higher number of women politicians in democracies does not have an effect on capital attraction. Although I find no evidence for the mechanism of firm's reputational concerns, legal commitments to women's political representation improve investor perceptions of regime's political stability especially in autocracies. These findings contribute to research on how women's political representation interacts with global markets, and the determinants of international capital flows.