Maxime Cugnon de Sévricourt

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Georgetown University, and I am currently on the job market. My research lies at the intersection of political economy and economic theory, with a focus on how electoral incentives influence policy choices under uncertainty.

My Job Market Paper, “Electoral Gambles: Why Politicians Choose Risky Policies,” extends a model of electoral accountability by introducing a new dimension of choice for politicians: the level of uncertainty associated with their policy decisions. I establish the existence of pure-strategy equilibria for a range of parameters and show that, under certain conditions, electoral incentives can lead low-ability incumbents to select riskier policies than they otherwise would, to the detriment of voter welfare.