Vincent Pons
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vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons
@vinpons.bsky.social
2.7K followers 530 following 110 posts

Professor at Harvard Business School. Affiliate at NBER, CEPR, JPal. Cofounder at Explain. Column at Les Echos. Political economy, development, tech.

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Vincent Pons is a French economist who is the Michael B. Kim Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Pons's research focuses on questions in political economy and development economics. .. more

Political science 42%
Economics 21%
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vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Thanks for reading!

This talk is partly based on my Harvard PhD course with Jesse Shapiro. Syllabus: www.vincentpons.org/syllabus-pee... (n/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Schönenberger shows that narrowly ousted incumbents who are freed from reelection concerns shift to more extreme positions after elections, during the lame-duck session (21/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
I finally mention @fsberger.bsky.social 's very nice jmp: “Out of Office, Out of Step? Re-election Concerns and Ideological Shirking in Lame Duck Sessions of the U.S. House of Representatives” (20/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
We made our data accessible at www.nationalelectionsdatabase.com: the National Elections Database (Version 2.0) (19/n).
National Elections Database
The National Elections Database provides detailed national election results for parliamentary and presidential elections worldwide from 1789 to 2023. The version 1.0 of this dataset was first built to...
www.nationalelectionsdatabase.com

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Our interpretation for the positive effects of turnovers is that leaders in their first term exert more effort. Indeed, in later terms, voters already have a lot of information and have formed precise beliefs about the incumbent’s type, so incumbent can only move the needle a bit (18/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
The third is my paper with Marx and @vincent-rollet.bsky.social, “Electoral Turnovers” (ReStud).
We ask whether electoral turnovers improve performance using a cross-country RDD on 4k presidential and parliamentary elections since 1945 (17/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
The second is “Populist Leaders and the Economy” (AER) by Funke, @schularick.bsky.social and Trebesch who study the economic effects of 51 populist governments using the synthetic control method (16/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
The first is “Partisan Shocks and Financial Markets: Evidence from Close National Elections” (AEJ: Applied) by @dgirardi.bsky.social. Using a cross-country RDD, Girardi finds that left-wing electoral victories cause large short-term decreases in stock market valuation (15/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Until recently, much of the evidence on these effects was at the subnational level and within country. I discuss three papers using novel cross-country evidence on the effects of national election outcomes (presidential and parliamentary elections), which are likely more consequential (14/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
In the second part of the talk, I discuss recent work on the economic effects of elections through two main forces, representation and agency (13/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
I conclude this first part by mentioning additional data sources to study voter and candidate behavior (12/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Overall, how strategic are voters and candidates/parties, based on these new results? Does Adam Smith’s invisible hand apply to elections? (11/n)

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
This convergence is partly driven by candidates’ strategic adjustment to their competitors (10/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
We find convergence in ideology, complexity, and topics between rounds, as candidate target a broader and more diverse set of voters in the 2nd round (9/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
To determine whether politicians strategically adjust their platforms to their electorate, recent work studies changes in politicians’ positions across different rounds of the same election.

I discuss our paper with Di Tella, Kotti and @clpennec.bsky.social, “Keep your Enemies Closer” (AER) (8/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Re: the choice of platform I emphasize another normative tension (7/n):

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
I then move to candidates and parties, considering 2 key decisions: whether or not to run; and which platform to run on (e.g., topics covered and specific propositions) (6/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
b/ My paper with Tricaud, “Expressive Voting and Its Cost: Evidence from Runoffs with Two or Three Candidates” (Econometrica) (some graphs below)
c/ Anagol and @thomasfujiwara.bsky.social Fujiwara, “The Runner-Up Effect” (JPE) (5/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Among recent empirical papers assessing the extent to which voters behave expressively or strategically, I discuss
a/ “Expressive vs. Strategic Voters: An Empirical Assessment” (JPubE) by Spenkuch (4/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
Re: voters’ choice to vote expressively for their preferred candidate (elections as an end) or strategically for one of the top-two candidates, in order to influence the outcome of the election (elections as a means), I emphasize the following normative tension (3/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
In the first part, I outline two rival views of elections: as a means and as an end (2/n).

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
The first part of the talk is on the drivers of elections outcomes, focusing on one question: are voters and candidates/parties behaving strategically?
The second part is on the economic effects of elections, focusing on the effects of national election results (1/n).

Reposted by Thomas Fujiwara

vinpons.bsky.social
Vincent Pons @vinpons.bsky.social · 4d
A week ago, I gave the “Recent Developments in the Political Economy of Elections and Democracy” lecture at the 2026 AEA @assameeting.bsky.social !

Video: www.aeaweb.org/webcasts/202...
Slides: www.vincentpons.org/recent-devel...

Thread with the TL;DR of my talk below.