Vincent Pons
About
I am a Professor at Harvard Business School, a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Economics department, and I am 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). I ​received the 2023 Best Young French Economist Award.
In my research, I examine the foundations of democracy: how democratic systems function, and how they can be improved. I decompose 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. See my Personal Statement (as of February 2023).
My work has appeared in journals such as Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, 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.
​
I received a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Master’s degrees in Economics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (joint with the Paris School of Economics and ENSAE) and in Political Philosophy from Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.