Municipal Fiscal Performance: Mayors’ Gender and Organizational Human Resources

Local governments strive to improve fiscal performance to effectively implement policy agendas and reduce dependence on central governments. Explaining fiscal performance has relied on intergovernmental relations and politically driven strategies and has given less attention to organizational human capital attributes. Mayors and municipal personnel with different attributes interact differently, thus affecting their contributions to fiscal performance. This study assesses the fiscal performance effects of mayors’ gender and municipal personnel attributes and their interactions. We assess fiscal performance as fiscal capacity, autonomy, and solvency. Using 2003-2015 data from 822 Brazilian municipalities, we find results contingent on the assessed fiscal performance dimension. Female mayors are positively associated with fiscal capacity and autonomy but not with solvency. Personnel availability and salary are positively correlated with fiscal capacity and autonomy but negatively correlated with solvency. Under a female mayor, the fiscal performance contribution of available personnel increases, while average salary’s fiscal performance contribution declines.