Publications

2022
Working Paper

Small Campaign Donors

By: Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons

In this paper, we study the characteristics and behavior of small donors, and compare them to those of large donors. We first build a novel dataset including all the 340 million individual contributions reported to the U.S. Federal Election Commission between 2005 and... View Details

Keywords: Campaign Finance; Campaign Contributions; Small Donations; ActBlue; WinRed; TV Advertising; Political Elections; Finance; Demographics; Advertising; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science

August 2021
Article

Voter Mobilization and Trust in Electoral Institutions: Evidence from Kenya

By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri

Voter mobilization campaigns face trade-offs in young democracies. In a large-scale experiment implemented in 2013 with the Kenyan Electoral Commission (IEBC), text messages intended to mobilize voters boosted participation but also decreased trust in electoral... View Details

Keywords: Political Participation; Electoral Institutions; Field Experiment; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Trust

Article

All Eyes on Them: A Field Experiment on Citizen Oversight and Electoral Integrity

By: Natalia Garbiras-Díaz and Mateo Montenegro

Can information and communication technologies help citizens monitor their elections? We analyze a large-scale field experiment designed to answer this question in Colombia. We leveraged Facebook advertisements sent to over 4 million potential voters to encourage... View Details

Keywords: Social Influence; Electoral Behavior; Election Outcomes; Economics; Economy; Governance; Government and Politics; Social Media; Social Marketing; Society; Political Elections; Advertising

Purchase

2022
Working Paper

The Impact of Campaign Finance Rules on Candidate Selection and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from France

By: Nikolaj Broberg, Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud

This paper investigates the effects of campaign finance rules on electoral outcomes. In French departmental and municipal elections, candidates competing in districts above 9,000 inhabitants face spending limits and are eligible for public reimbursement if they obtain... View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Finance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Outcome or Result; France

28 Sep 2017
News

An electoral French revolution

June 2023
Case

The Business of Campaigns

By: Vincent Pons and Mel Martin

In 2022, the U.S. Congress examined the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, the latest in a long series of campaign finance reforms. According to its authors, the law would be the “most consequential overhaul of federal... View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Government Legislation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; United States

Educators

Purchase

23 Jun 2020
Book

Beginning America Over Again with a New Electoral System

Katherine M. Gehl, founder of Institute for Political Innovation, and Harvard Business School strategy expert Michael E. Porter. Among the reforms put forward by Gehl and Porter is a nonpartisan congressional legislative system that rises from a new federal View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2023
Working Paper

Words Can Hurt: How Political Communication Can Change the Pace of an Epidemic

By: Jessica Gagete-Miranda, Lucas Argentieri Mariani and Paula Rettl

While elite-cue effects on public opinion are well-documented, questions remain as to when and why voters use elite cues to inform their opinions and behaviors. Using experimental and observational data from Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, we study how leader... View Details

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... View Details

2017
Working Paper

Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France

By: Vincent Pons

This paper provides the first estimate of the effect of door-to-door canvassing on actual electoral outcomes, via a countrywide experiment embedded in François Hollande's campaign in the 2012 French presidential election. While existing experiments randomized... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Political Elections; France

10 May 2016
First Look

May 10, 2016

Society Has Social Science Taken Over Electoral Campaigns and Should We Regret It? By: Pons, Vincent Abstract—No abstract available. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51036 May... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

June 2018
Article

Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France

By: Vincent Pons

This paper provides the first estimate of the effect of door-to-door canvassing on actual electoral outcomes, via a countrywide experiment embedded in François Hollande's campaign in the 2012 French presidential election. While existing experiments randomized... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Political Elections; Interpersonal Communication; France

28 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

Ground Game, Air Wars, and Other Marketing Lessons From Presidential Elections

October working paper The Air War versus The Ground Game: An Analysis of Multi-Channel Marketing in US Presidential Elections, was cowritten with HBS doctoral student Lingling Zhang. Chung and Zhang pored over 18,650 observations on voting outcomes and View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2024
Working Paper

Voting Rules, Turnout, and Economic Policies

By: Enrico Cantoni, Vincent Pons and Jérôme Schäfer

In recent years, voter ID laws and convenience voting have generated heated partisan debates. To shed light on these policy issues, we survey the recent evidence on the institutional determinants and effects of voter turnout and broaden the perspective beyond the most... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Political Elections; Policy

Register to Read

Research Summary

Overview

By: Vincent Pons

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... View Details

October 2021 (Revised November 2022)
Case

The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats, or Leveling Down?

By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi

Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country’s labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Labor Market; Unemployment; Recession; Globalized Markets and Industries; Government Legislation; International Relations; Working Conditions; Employment; Labor Unions; Contracts; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Spain; European Union