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Abstract

This dissertation explores how local leadership, colonial legacies, and institutional reforms shape economic and social outcomes. Each chapter examines a different context where governance plays a central role in long-term development and inequality. In Chapter 2, I study whether female leadership can reduce violence in civil conflict. Focusing on the Colombian armed conflict, I combine local election outcomes with novel data on the gender of guerrilla commanders to show that electing a female mayor reduces conflict violence by 60%, that guerrilla units led by women are less likely to engage in violence, and that having female leaders on both sides further reinforces de-escalation. I document a gender gap in preferences for peace over violence as the primary mechanism behind these results, and formalize this mechanism in a simple theoretical model. In Chapter 3, I examine the long-run effects of Spanish colonization in the U.S. Southwest. I construct a new dataset on the location of Spanish Missions and link it to both historical and modern economic outcomes. Counties closer to missions show persistently higher income, urbanization, and education—patterns that are driven by early advantages in agricultural productivity and skilled labor. To address endogeneity concerns, I use two complementary strategies based on planned-but-unbuilt Missions and an instrumental variable. The evidence suggests that Missions gave counties an early lead in structural transformation, with timely access to infrastructure, particularly railroads, facilitating the shift from agriculture to manufacturing and services. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the Usos y Costumbres (UC) reform in Mexico, which enabled Indigenous municipalities to adopt customary governance. Using administrative data and an event-study design, I show that UC adoption increased household income inequality by 10%, driven by rising gaps between villages within municipalities. The effect was strongest where UC governments enforced rules through sanctions and collective agriculture, pointing to a rise in political and institutional inequality as the underlying mechanism. Taken together, this dissertation shows that leadership and institutional design are central to understanding not only patterns of governance, but also the unequal distribution of development outcomes across space and communities.