Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Dr. Tom Zylkin

Abstract

Economic and political factors have been shown to influence the trade policy decisions of national leaders. The impact of a national leader’s gender on their trade policy preferences remains an underexplored area of research. The increasing share of female national leaders raises the question of whether their policy preferences vary from those of male leaders because of their gender. In this study, I utilize the gender of a nation’s leader to implement a two-way fixed effects regression that analyzes the impact of gender on a leader’s trade policy preferences. Controlling for factors that could also impact a leader’s trade policy choices, such as age, political affiliation, GDP, and GDP per capita. I find that gender does not have a statistically significant effect on trade policy, even when sub-setting the sample to only include observations after 1990. On the other hand, I find that GDP and GDP per capita impact a leader’s trade policy decisions. However, further research is necessary to determine whether gender has an effect on a leader’s trade policy decisions.

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