Vincent Pons
Byron Wien Professor of Business Administration
Byron Wien Professor of Business Administration
U.S. states increasingly require identification to vote—an ostensible attempt to deter fraud that prompts complaints of selective disenfranchisement. Using a difference-in-differences design on a panel data set with 1.6 billion observations, 2008–2018, we find that the laws have no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation. These results hold through a large number of specifications. Our most demanding specification controls for state, year, and voter fixed effects, along with state and voter time-varying controls. Based on this specification, we obtain point estimates of −0.1 percentage points for effects both on overall registration and turnout (with 95% confidence intervals of [−2.3; 2.1 percentage points] and [−3.0; 2.8 percentage points], respectively), and +1.4 percentage points for the effect on the turnout of nonwhite voters relative to whites (with a 95% confidence interval of [−0.5; 3.2percentage points]). The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be attributed to voters’ reaction against the laws, measured by campaign contributions and self-reported political engagement. However, the likelihood that nonwhite voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities. Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived. Overall, our findings suggest that efforts to improve elections may be better directed at other reforms. JEL Codes: D72.
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Vincent Pons is Byron Wien Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and he is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Vincent Pons's research examines the foundations of democracy: how democratic systems function, and how they can be improved. He decomposes the electoral cycle into four essential steps: the factors affecting voter participation, those shaping preferences, the representativeness of results, and the effects of election outcomes on policies and on countries’ economic performance. 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, The BBC, Les Echos, and Le Monde.
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)
U.S. states increasingly require identification to vote—an ostensible attempt to deter fraud that prompts complaints of selective disenfranchisement. Using a difference-in-differences design on a panel data set with 1.6 billion observations, 2008–2018, we find that the laws have no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation. These results hold through a large number of specifications. Our most demanding specification controls for state, year, and voter fixed effects, along with state and voter time-varying controls. Based on this specification, we obtain point estimates of −0.1 percentage points for effects both on overall registration and turnout (with 95% confidence intervals of [−2.3; 2.1 percentage points] and [−3.0; 2.8 percentage points], respectively), and +1.4 percentage points for the effect on the turnout of nonwhite voters relative to whites (with a 95% confidence interval of [−0.5; 3.2percentage points]). The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be attributed to voters’ reaction against the laws, measured by campaign contributions and self-reported political engagement. However, the likelihood that nonwhite voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities. Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived. Overall, our findings suggest that efforts to improve elections may be better directed at other reforms. JEL Codes: D72.
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. - Journal Articles
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- Galasso, Vincenzo, Vincent Pons, Paola Profeta, Martin McKee, David Stuckler, Michael Becher, Sylvain Brouard, and Martial Foucault. "Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy: Experimental Evidence from Nine Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic." BMJ Global Health 8, no. 9 (September 2023). View Details
- Granzier, Riako, Vincent Pons, and Clémence Tricaud. "Coordination and Bandwagon Effects: How Past Rankings Shape the Behavior of Voters and Candidates." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 15, no. 4 (October 2023): 177–217. View Details
- 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 138 (May 2023): 703–767. 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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- Cantoni, Enrico, Vincent Pons, and Jérôme Schäfer. "Voting Rules, Turnout, and Economic Policies." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 32941, September 2024. View Details
- Gethin, Amory, and Vincent Pons. "Social Movements and Public Opinion in the United States." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 32342, April 2024. View Details
- Brown, Jacob R., Enrico Cantoni, Sahil Chinoy, Martin Koenen, and Vincent Pons. "The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior: Evidence from Young U.S. Movers, 1992–2021." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 31759, October 2023. View Details
- Di Tella, Rafael, Randy Kotti, Caroline Le Pennec, and Vincent Pons. "Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 31503, July 2023. View Details
- 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
- Bossuroy, Thomas, Clara Delavallade, and Vincent Pons. "Biometric Monitoring, Service Delivery and Misreporting: Evidence from Healthcare in India." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 26388, October 2019. (Revise and resubmit requested, Review of Economics and Statistics.) 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. (Revise and resubmit requested, The Journal of Politics.) View Details
- Bouton, Laurent, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte, and Vincent Pons. "Small Campaign Donors." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30050, May 2022. View Details
- Galasso, Vincenzo, Vincent Pons, Paola Profeta, Michael Becher, Sylvain Brouard, and Martial Foucault. "Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy: Experimental Evidence from Nine Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic." 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. "The Business of Campaigns." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 724-003, July 2023. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, and Mel Martin. "The Business of Campaigns." Harvard Business School Case 723-039, June 2023. View Details
- Pons, Vincent, and Rafael Di Tella. "The Trouble with TCE." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 723-051, February 2023. View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "The Creation and Fissuring of Consensus." Harvard Business School Module Note 723-048, March 2023. View Details
- Pons, Vincent. "Spanish Labor Law: Lifting all Boats or Leveling Down?" Harvard Business School Teaching Note 723-015, December 2022. (Revised March 2023.) 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. (Revised March 2023.) 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 January 2023.) View Details
- Pons, Vincent, John Masko, Rafael Di Tella, and William Mullins. "Unrest in Chile." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 721-016, November 2020. (Revised March 2023.) 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 January 2024.) 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 (2024 version)." Harvard Business School Technical Note 718-032, December 2017. (Revised November 2023.) 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 how democratic systems function, and how they can be improved.
He decomposes the electoral cycle into four essential steps: the factors affecting voter participation, those shaping preferences, the representativeness of results, and the effects of election outcomes on policies and on countries’ economic performance. While his individual papers focus on just one or two of these steps at a time, his research as a whole seeks to paint a fresh and articulated picture of how democracy works, from the inputs of voter decisions to the output of elections.
The first strand of his research seeks to help solve the puzzle of voter abstention by identifying its causes and searching for remedies. Professor Pons and two friends convinced the incumbent president of the region including Paris to run an experiment during his 2010 bid for reelection. They organized a door-to-door effort and trained activists from the Socialist Party in exchange for being allowed to randomly select the addresses covered. The resulting study proved that voter outreach methods commonly used in the U.S. could also be effective in other countries. Professor Pons has shown in subsequent work that their effects often come from reducing voting costs, such as those created by voter registration requirements.
The second strand of his research asks how we form our vote choices and preferences. In 2012, he had the opportunity to work as one of the three national coordinators of François Hollande’s field campaign for president of France. Together with the same two friends, he organized a total of 80,000 canvassers who knocked on five million doors across all France. He showed that the door-to-door visits won over a large fraction of voters and significantly contributed to Hollande’s victory. In two later projects, he zoomed out: he used survey data from 10 countries since 1952, then data covering the universe of U.S. voters, to assess the overall effects of all campaign information (not just a unique contact) and of all contextual factors (not just campaigns).
The third strand of his research explores two challenges to fair and representative electoral outcomes: failed coordination and imbalance. The fact that failed coordination within one side of the political spectrum can generate an undesirable outcome was clear in the 2002 French presidential election: Jospin was eliminated in the first round though left-wing candidates obtained far more votes in total than far-right ones. Another example is the 2000 U.S. presidential election, in which the 3% of votes earned by third-party candidate Ralph Nader in Florida was sufficient to sway the entire election in favor of George W. Bush. Professor Pons has estimated how frequent such electoral failures are and identified devices facilitating the coordination of voters as well as parties. Imbalance across sides may further bias the democratic process and tilt the result towards the incumbent. He has tested whether coordination failures tend to be larger on one side or the other and whether campaign finance regulations help level the playing field between incumbents and their challengers. Identifying the conditions that make incumbents’ defeat possible is essential: as Przeworski (1991) observed, what differentiates democracy from autocracy is, ultimately, that it is “a system in which parties lose elections.”
A fourth strand of research looks at the consequences of elections bringing a new party to power. One might worry that democratic power transitions open periods of uncertainty and instability. However, using data on all presidential and parliamentary elections in the world since 1945, Professor Pons finds that electoral turnovers tend to improve countries’ economic indicators as well as their performance on many other dimensions. Interestingly, these effects are weaker when internal and external constraints limit leaders’ ability to enact change. He has complemented this research with case studies in Spain, Bolivia and Zambia that explore the different ways in which globalization and foreign powers influence and constrain domestic policymaking. - Awards & Honors
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Winner of the 2023 Best Young Economist Award from Le Monde and the Cercle des économistes.
- Additional Information
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