Vincent Pons is Michael B. Kim Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and 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). He studies questions in political economy and development.
Pons’s research examines factors that explain people’s failure to register and vote, and how institutions and political campaigns affect these factors. This work led him to write Porte à porte: Reconquérir la démocratie sur le terrain , about François Hollande’s field campaign for the French 2012 presidential elections. It has resulted in mentions and opinion pieces in media outlets including Le Monde, The Huffington Post , and Slate. In his development research, he concentrates on health systems and policies. Pons was awarded the 2023 Best Young French Economist Award by Le Monde.
Pons received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a Master's in economics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (joint with the Paris School of Economics and ENSAE) and a Master’s degree in political philosophy from Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.