Publications

2020
Working Paper

On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout

By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers

Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for... View Details

Keywords: Voter Turnout; Paradox Of Voting; Pivotality; Elections; Model; Voting; Behavior; Theory

May 2023
Article

Political Ideology and International Capital Allocation

By: Elisabeth Kempf, Mancy Luo, Larissa Schäfer and Margarita Tsoutsoura

Does investors' political ideology shape international capital allocation? We provide evidence from two settings—syndicated corporate loans and equity mutual funds—to show ideological alignment with foreign governments affects the cross-border capital allocation by... View Details

Keywords: Capital Flows; Syndicated Loans; Mutual Funds; Partisanship; Polarization; Elections; Political Ideology; Banks and Banking; Institutional Investing; Behavioral Finance; Decision Choices and Conditions

Spring 2016
Article

Has Social Science Taken Over Electoral Campaigns and Should We Regret It?

By: Vincent Pons

Keywords: Data Analytics; Elections; Electoral Campaigns; Persuasion; Randomized Experiments

Find at Harvard

September 2018
Article

Expressive Voting and Its Cost: Evidence from Runoffs with Two or Three Candidates

By: Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud

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 percent of registered citizens. Using a fuzzy RDD... View Details

Keywords: Expressive Voting; Strategic Voting; Regression Discontinuity Design; French Elections; Voting; Political Elections; France

Find at Harvard

2018
Working Paper

Expressive Voting and Its Cost: Evidence from Runoffs with Two or Three Candidates

By: Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud

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 percent of registered citizens. Using a fuzzy RDD... View Details

Keywords: Expressive Voting; Strategic Voting; Regression Discontinuity Design; French Elections; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; France

October 2012 (Revised February 2013)
Case

Jim Johnson's Re-election to the Goldman Sachs Board

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Kelly Baker

The case presents the opposition by a leading institutional investor in Goldman Sachs to the re-election of Jim Johnson to the board of directors of the company. The investor, Sequoia Fund, opposes the re-election citing Jim Johnson's prior track record as the CEO of... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Corporate Governance; Director Elections; Goldman Sachs; Reputation; Institutional Investing; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Accountability; Banking Industry; New York (city, NY)

Purchase

July 2021
Article

Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons

We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting... View Details

Keywords: Campaigns; Candidates; Elections; Experiment; Political Parties; Turnout; Voting Behavior; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Interpersonal Communication; Italy

Find at Harvard

June 2018 (Revised June 2018)
Case

Facebook Confronts a Crisis of Trust

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

The case, “Facebook Confronts a Crisis of Trust,” starts with the crisis Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing in March 2018 over Cambridge Analytica’s accessing data from 87 million Facebook accounts in order to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential... View Details

Purchase

Forthcoming
Article

On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout

By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers

Prominent theory research on voting analyzes a variety of models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many... View Details

Keywords: Voting Behavior; Voting Turnout; Paradox Of Voting; Pivotality; Elections; Model; Theory; Governance Transparency; Government; Democracy; Turnout; Voting; Governance; Government and Politics; Public Sector; Political Elections

November 2020
Case

Axis My India

By: Ananth Raman, Ann Winslow and Kairavi Dey

Pradeep Gupta founded Axis My India (AMI) as a printing and publishing company in 1998. In 2013, AMI expanded into consumer research and election forecasting. Although a relatively unknown entity, AMI predicted several election results accurately. Gupta describes AMI’s... View Details

Keywords: Market Research; Operations; Management; Infrastructure; Logistics; Service Operations; Political Elections; Forecasting and Prediction; Asia; India

Purchase

21 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

Voter ID Laws Don't Work (But They Don't Hurt Anything, Either)

The North Carolina State Board of Elections began a hearing this week into alleged ballot tampering in last year’s 9th District congressional race, which ended in a razor-thin, 905-vote win for Republican Mark Harris. Since the 2016... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

09 Nov 2016
Op-Ed

6 Lessons from Donald Trump's Winning Marketing Manual

Donald Trump's victory may be a surprise—but not to astute marketers. Here are six important lessons from Trump's brand marketing playbook: Give consumers a job. The best marketing campaigns always call on consumers to do something. For example, United invites you to... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch

2021
Working Paper

The Changing Role of Business in Society

By: Michael E. Porter

Business interaction with the U.S. government, historically based on securing industry or company special interests at the expense of the public good, has enabled and furthered government dysfunction. Gridlock within the American political system has precluded the... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Fixing Market Failures or Fixing Elections? Agricultural Credit in India

By: Shawn A. Cole

This paper integrates theories of political budget cycles with theories of tactical electoral redistribution to test for political capture in a novel way. Studying banks in India, I find that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Political Elections; State Ownership; Banking Industry; India

August 2024
Background Note

Brief Note on the U.S. Presidential Electoral Process (2024)

By: Robert F. White

A note describing the history and mechanics of the United States' presidential election system, the electoral college. View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Public Administration Industry; United States

August 2024
Background Note

Brief Note on Congressional and Down-Ballot Races (2024)

By: Robert F. White

This brief note explains the other elections that occur in the United States at the same time as the presidential election. View Details

Keywords: Political Elections; Public Administration Industry; United States