Vincent Pons
Michael B. Kim Associate Professor of Business Administration
Michael B. Kim Associate Professor of Business Administration
To learn more about Vincent Pons, consult his website.
Vincent Pons is an associate professor of business administration in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a faculty affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Vincent Pons studies questions in political economy and development. Across the world, distrust and dissatisfaction with elected governments are at all-time highs. Professor Pons’s research studies democratic representation to understand why representative democracies can fail to deliver leaders, policies and economic outcomes aligned with people’s preferences. This work has appeared in journals such as Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the American Political Science Review. It has resulted in mentions and opinion pieces in media outlets including The New York Times, The Economist, PRI's The World, the Huffington Post, le Monde, and BFM Business.
Professor Pons received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a master in economics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (joint with the Paris School of Economics and ENSAE) and a master’s degree in political philosophy from Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.
- Featured Work
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We measure the overall influence of contextual versus individual factors (e.g., voting rules and media as opposed to race and education) on voter behavior, and explore underlying mechanisms. Using a US-wide voter-level panel, 2008–2018, we examine voters who relocate across state and county lines, tracking changes in registration, turnout, and party affiliation to estimate location and individual fixed effects in a value-added model. Location explains 37 percent of the cross-state variation in turnout (to 63 percent for individual characteristics) and an only slightly smaller share of variation in party affiliation. Place effects are larger for young and White voters. (JEL D12, D72, I20, J15, L82, R23)In French parliamentary and local elections, candidates ranked first and second in the first round automatically qualify for the second round, while a third candidate qualifies only when selected by more than 12.5% of registered citizens. Using a fuzzy RDD around this threshold, we find that the third candidate attracts both “switchers,” who would have voted for one of the top two candidates if she were not present, and “loyal” voters, who would have abstained. Switchers vote for the third candidate even when she is very unlikely to win. This disproportionately harms the candidate ideologically closest to her and causes his defeat in one fifth of the races. These results suggest that a large fraction of voters value voting expressively over behaving strategically to ensure the victory of their second best. We rationalize our findings by a model in which different types of voters trade off expressive and strategic motives.This paper provides the first estimate of the effect of door-to-door canvassing on actual electoral outcomes, via a countrywide experiment embedded in Francois Hollande’s campaign in the 2012 French presidential election. While existing experiments randomized door-to-door visits at the individual level, the scale of this campaign (five million doors knocked) enabled randomization by precinct, the level at which vote shares are recorded administratively. Visits did not affect turnout, but increased Hollande’s vote share in the first round and accounted for one fourth of his victory margin in the second. Visits’ impact persisted in later elections, suggesting a lasting persuasion effect.A large-scale randomized experiment conducted during the 2012 French presidential and parliamentary elections shows that voter registration requirements have significant effects on turnout, resulting in unequal participation. We assigned 20,500 apartments to one control or six treatment groups that received canvassing visits providing either information about registration or help to register at home. While both types of visits increased registration, home registration visits had a higher impact than information-only visits, indicating that both information costs and administrative barriers impede registration. Home registration did not reduce turnout among those who would have registered anyway. On the contrary, citizens registered due to the visits became more interested in and knowledgeable about the elections as a result of being able to participate in them, and 93% voted at least once in 2012. The results suggest that easing registration requirements could substantially enhance political participation and interest while improving representation of all groups.
- Journal Articles
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- Le Pennec, Caroline, and Vincent Pons. "How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multi-Country Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates." Quarterly Journal of Economics (forthcoming). View Details
- Granzier, Riako, Vincent Pons, and Clémence Tricaud. "Coordination and Bandwagon Effects: How Past Rankings Shape the Behavior of Voters and Candidates." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 26599, December 2019. (Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.) View Details
- Cantoni, Enrico, and Vincent Pons. "Does Context Outweigh Individual Characteristics in Driving Voting Behavior? Evidence from Relocations within the U.S." American Economic Review 112, no. 4 (April 2022): 1226–1272. View Details
- Cantoni, Enrico, and Vincent Pons. "Strict ID Laws Don't Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018." Quarterly Journal of Economics 136, no. 4 (November 2021): 2615–2660. View Details
- Marx, Benjamin, Vincent Pons, and Tavneet Suri. "Voter Mobilization and Trust in Electoral Institutions: Evidence from Kenya." Economic Journal 131, no. 638 (August 2021): 2585–2612. View Details
- Cantoni, Enrico, and Vincent Pons. "Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy." Economics & Politics 33, no. 2 (July 2021): 379–402. View Details
- Marx, Benjamin, Vincent Pons, and Tavneet Suri. "Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization." Art. 104332. Journal of Public Economics 197 (May 2021). View Details
- Galasso, Vincenzo, Vincent Pons, Paola Profeta, Michael Becher, Sylvain Brouard, and Martial Foucault. "Gender Differences in COVID-19 Attitudes and Behavior: Panel Evidence from Eight Countries." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 44 (November 3, 2020). View Details
- Pons, Vincent, and Guillaume Liegey. "Increasing the Electoral Participation of Immigrants: Experimental Evidence from France." Economic Journal 129, no. 617 (January 2019): 481–508. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-094, February 2016.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, and Clémence Tricaud. "Expressive Voting and Its Cost: Evidence from Runoffs with Two or Three Candidates." Econometrica 86, no. 5 (September 2018): 1621–1649. View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France." American Economic Review 108, no. 6 (June 2018): 1322–1363. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-079, January 2016.) View Details
- Braconnier, Céline, Jean-Yves Dormagen, and Vincent Pons. "Voter Registration Costs and Disenfranchisement: Experimental Evidence from France." American Political Science Review 111, no. 3 (August 2017): 584–604. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-098, March 2016.) View Details
- Devoto, Florencia, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, William Pariente, and Vincent Pons. "Happiness on Tap: Piped Water Adoption in Urban Morocco." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 4, no. 4 (November 2012): 68–99. View Details
- Working Papers
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- Marx, Benjamin, Vincent Pons, and Vincent Rollet. "Electoral Turnovers." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29766, February 2022. (Revise and resubmit requested, Review of Economic Studies.) View Details
- Granzier, Riako, Vincent Pons, and Clémence Tricaud. "Coordination and Bandwagon Effects: How Past Rankings Shape the Behavior of Voters and Candidates." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 26599, December 2019. (Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.) View Details
- Bossuroy, Thomas, Clara Delavallade, and Vincent Pons. "Biometric Tracking, Healthcare Provision, and Data Quality: Experimental Evidence from Tuberculosis Control." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 26388, October 2019. (Revise and resubmit requested, Review of Economics and Statistics.) View Details
- Bouton, Laurent, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte, and Vincent Pons. "Small Campaign Donors." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30050, May 2022. View Details
- Becher, Michael, Nicholas Longuet Marx, Vincent Pons, Sylvain Brouard, Martial Foucault, Vincenzo Galasso, Eric Kerrouche, Sandra León Alfonso, and Daniel Stegmueller. "COVID-19, Government Performance, and Democracy: Survey Experimental Evidence from 12 Countries." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29514, November 2021. View Details
- Galasso, Vincenzo, Vincent Pons, Paola Profeta, Michael Becher, Sylvain Brouard, and Martial Foucault. "From Anti-vax Intentions to Vaccination: From Anti-vax Intentions to Vaccination: Panel and Experimental Evidence from Nine Countries." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29741, February 2022. View Details
- Broberg, Nikolaj, Vincent Pons, and Clémence Tricaud. "The Impact of Campaign Finance Rules on Candidate Selection and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from France." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29805, February 2022. View Details
- Ben Dhia, Aïcha, Bruno Crépon, Esther Mbih, Louise Paul-Delvaux, Bertille Picard, and Vincent Pons. "Can a Website Bring Unemployment Down? Experimental Evidence from France." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29914, April 2022. View Details
- Dano, Kevin, Francesco Ferlenga, Vincenzo Galasso, Caroline Le Pennec, and Vincent Pons. "Coordination and Incumbency Advantage in Multi-Party Systems: Evidence from French Elections." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30541, October 2022. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Pons, Vincent. "Spanish Labor Law: Lifting all Boats or Leveling Down?" Harvard Business School Teaching Note 723-015, December 2022. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, William Mullins, and Ruth Costas. "Walmart Chile After the Unrest: Doubling Down or Pulling Out?" Harvard Business School Teaching Note 723-014, November 2022. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella, and Elena Corsi. "The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats, or Leveling Down?" Harvard Business School Case 722-008, October 2021. (Revised November 2022.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, William Mullins, Ruth Costas, and Pedro Levindo. "Walmart Chile After the Unrest: Doubling Down or Pulling Out?" Harvard Business School Case 722-012, August 2021. (Revised June 2022.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Rafael Di Tella, and Galit Goldstein. "The Trouble with TCE." Harvard Business School Case 721-031, March 2021. (Revised March 2020.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, John Masko, Rafael Di Tella, and William Mullins. "Unrest in Chile." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 721-016, November 2020. View Details
- Abdelal, Rawi, Rafael Di Tella, Vincent Pons, and Galit Goldstein. "Fiscal Responses to COVID-19." Harvard Business School Case 721-011, October 2020. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, William Mullins, John Masko, Annelena Lobb, and Rafael Di Tella. "Unrest in Chile." Harvard Business School Case 720-033, April 2020. (Revised July 2020.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Amram Migdal, and Mike Lynch. "Climate Change: Paris, and the Road Ahead." Harvard Business School Case 718-038, March 2018. (Revised January 2019.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Climate Change: Paris, and the Road Ahead." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 719-050, March 2019. View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Liberté, égalité, fragilité: The Rise of Populism in France." Harvard Business School Case 717-052, April 2017. (Revised February 2022.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Liberté, égalité, fragilité: The Rise of Populism in France." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 719-049, February 2019. (Revised February 2022.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, and Elena Corsi. "Liberté, égalité, fragilité: The Rise of Populism in France (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 719-075, April 2019. (Revised September 2022.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Rafael Di Tella, and Annelena Lobb. "Populism in Bolivia: From Goni's Neoliberal Shock to Evo's Oil Contract Renegotiations." Harvard Business School Case 719-001, February 2019. (Revised March 2019.) View Details
- Di Tella, Rafael, Vincent Pons, and Nathaniel Schwalb. "Populism in Bolivia: From Goni's Neoliberal Shock to Evo's Oil Contract Renegotiations." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 719-057, March 2019. (Revised March 2019.) View Details
- Di Tella, Rafael, Vincent Pons, Sarah Mehta, and David Lane. "Goodbye IMF Conditions, Hello Chinese Capital: Zambia's Copper Industry and Africa's Break with Its Colonial Past." Harvard Business School Case 717-034, June 2017. (Revised August 2018.) View Details
- Di Tella, Rafael, Vincent Pons, Sarah Mehta, and David Lane. "Goodbye IMF Conditions, Hello Chinese Capital: Zambia's Copper Industry and Africa's Break with Its Colonial Past." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 717-055, June 2017. (Revised August 2017.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, and Marco E. Tabellini. "Democracy: Exit, Voice and Representation." Harvard Business School Technical Note 719-038, November 2018. (Revised January 2020.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Populism." Harvard Business School Technical Note 719-037, November 2018. (Revised June 2019.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Multilateralism." Harvard Business School Technical Note 719-039, November 2018. View Details
- Cavallo, Alberto, Kristin Fabbe, Mattias Fibiger, Jeremy Friedman, Reshmaan Hussam, Vincent Pons, and Matthew Weinzierl. "The BGIE Twenty (2022 version)." Harvard Business School Technical Note 718-032, December 2017. (Revised January 2022.) View Details
- Other Publications
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- Pons, Vincent, and Vestal McIntyre. "Ground Work vs. Social Media: How to Best Reach Voters in French Municipal Elections." IPP Policy Brief, Nº50, Institut des Politiques Publiques, February 2020. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Clémence Tricaud, and Vestal McIntyre. "Expressive Voting and Its Costs." IPP Policy Brief, Nº40, Institut des Politiques Publiques, May 2019. View Details
- Liégey, Guillaume, Arthur Muller, and Vincent Pons. Porte à porte: Reconquérir la démocratie sur le terrain. Calmann-Lévy, 2013, French ed. View Details
- Huddart, Sophie, Thomas Bossuroy, Vincent Pons, Siddhartha Baral, Madhukar Pai, and Clara Delavallade. "Knowledge about Tuberculosis and Infection Prevention Behavior: A Nine City Longitudinal Study from India." PLoS ONE 13, no. 10 (2018). View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Has Social Science Taken Over Electoral Campaigns and Should We Regret It?" French Politics, Culture and Society 34, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 34–47. View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Comment mobiliser les exclus du jeu politique?" Regards croisés sur l'économie, no. 18 (2016): 213–226. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Guillaume Liégey, and Arthur Muller. "L'abstention n'est pas une fatalité." Esprit, nos. 3-4 (March–April 2011): 77–88. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Guillaume Liégey, and Arthur Muller. "Les rouages de la démocratie en panne: quel rôle pour les partis politiques?" In Pour changer de civilisation: Martine Aubry avec 50 chercheurs et citoyens, edited by Martine Aubry. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob, 2011, French ed. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, Jose Miguel Abito, Katarina Borovickova, Hays Golden, Jacob Goldin, Matthew A. Masten, Miguel Morin, Alexander Poirier, Israel Romem, Tyler Williams, and Chamna Yoon. "How Should the Graduate Economics Core be Changed?" Journal of Economic Education 42, no. 4 (2011): 414–417. View Details
- Research Summary
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Professor Pons studies questions in political economy and development with the goal of understanding why representative democracies can fail to deliver leaders, policies and economic outcomes aligned with people’s preferences and how to strengthen it.
Professor Pons' political economy research has three broad components, corresponding to three critical steps in the democratic process, with a focus on the role played by political parties.
First, representative democratic outcomes hinge on most or all eligible citizens engaging in the political game and participating in elections. Professor Pons has run field experiments spanning entire countries and embedded in real campaigns to study the effects of voter outreach efforts, to identify which barriers to voting they can effectively reduce, and to measure the gains candidates and parties can expect from them. An experiment on voter registration in France showed that both the provision of information and the facilitation of administrative registration requirements could substantially increase political participation and improve the representation of marginalized groups without diminishing the overall level of voter awareness. Another large-scale field experiment, embedded in François Hollande’s campaign in the 2012 French presidential election, revealed that partisan campaigns can have a large and lasting impact on vote shares. A more recent project estimates a value-added model on panel data covering the vast majority of the U.S. voting-age population to assess the relative influence of contextual drivers of voter behavior, such as party activities, election rules, and economic growth, vs. individual factors, such as race and education.Second, Professor Pons studies the mechanisms of how elections aggregate voters’ preferences, namely: which candidates decide to run and on which positions, how voters form their preferences and translate them into vote choices, and how the voting rule translates ballots cast into election outcomes such as the designation of a new president or parliament. The programmatic work done by political parties and the alliances they strike with each other can help structure the multi-dimensional policy space, narrow down the number of candidates and increase the representativeness of elected leaders. A recent study uses a regression discontinuity design to show that the plurality rule often leads to suboptimal outcomes, due to failed coordination by both parties and voters: in a large fraction of elections, voters have to choose between more than two candidates, due to parties’ failure to reach an agreement, and a large fraction of them vote expressively (for the candidate they prefer) instead of strategically (for a candidate with a chance of winning) in that case.
Third, democracies’ ability to deliver social and economic outcomes aligned with people’s preferences depends on the extent to which elected governments turn electoral results into actual policies. Representatives may fail to implement the policies for which they were elected, due to limited capacity, misaligned incentives, or constraints imposed by supranational and subnational forces. In a new project studying all national elections in the world since 1789, Professor Pons assesses the extent to which voters obtain the change (in policies and ensuing outcomes) for which they vote when they put a new party in power.Which policy is most likely to deliver desired social and economic results and improve substantive democracy can sometimes be difficult to assess. Professor Pons has conducted experiments which help address this issue by evaluating interventions aimed at improving the quality of public services and enabling all citizens, including the most disadvantaged, to benefit from them. In several studies, he examines treatment of tuberculosis in India. One study focuses on the effect of biometric monitoring devices on patients’ treatment compliance, health workers’ attendance, and data forgery, and another on the effectiveness of health worker incentives on early detection of TB and on ensuring that patients complete the full course of treatment.
- Additional Information
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