First, we can control for whether the Pradhan is new or not. It would not be legitimate to compare investments in all unreserved GP where Pradhan are new to those in reserved GP: the fact that the Pradhan is new may reflect unobserved characteristics of the GP, and this non-random sample selection would bias the results. There is, however, a random subset of unreserved GP where the Pradhan is always new in office. Individuals may run for a council seat only in the village in which she or he resides. Once elected, the councilors choose one of them to be Pradhan. As part of the reservation scheme, one third of council seats (identified by village) were reserved for women: thus, if the previous councilor was a man, and his seat was reserved for a woman in the 1998 election, we can be sure that the Pradhan for that GP will be new to office. We can therefore compare women Pradhan to this subgroup of new Pradhan, to control for the fact that the Pradhan is new in office. Clearly, this does not fully control for the Pradhan’s experience: even new Pradhan could be experienced politicians.Second, we can control for whether the Pradhan is likely to be re-elected in 2003. Every third GP starting with the second in the list will be reserved for a female Pradhan for the 2003 election. Pradhan in those GP should realize that they will not be able to stand for re-election as Pradhan (if their particular seat is not reserved, they may still be able to run for a position of member of the GP council). We therefore restrict the sample to GP reserved in 1998 and those which will be reserved in 2003, to examine whether and to what extent the differences we observe are due to the fact that women may not think they have a chance to be reelected.10 Again, men could still have a longer horizon in office than women, if they plan to be elected on another position or be elected again in 10 years.Finally, we take advantage of the reservation of about 44% of the seats to SC and ST. These reservation were also selected randomly, and within each list, one third of positions were reserved for women. Irrespective of their gender, all the leaders elected under this reservation policy tend to be new leaders and to be elected in large part due to the quota system. They also tend to