working papers

2025

1. A Different World: Enduring Effects of School Desegregation on Ideology and Attitudes Kaplan, E., J. Spenkuch, and C. Tuttle [Abstract] [PDF]

   In 1975, a federal court ordered the desegregation of public schools in Jefferson County, KY. In order to approximately equalize the share of minorities across schools, students were assigned to a busing schedule that depended on the first letter of their last name. We use the resulting quasi-random variation to estimate the long-run impact of attending an inner-city school on political participation and preferences among whites. Drawing on administrative voter registration records and an original survey, we find that being bused to an inner-city school significantly increases support for the Democratic Party and its candidates more than forty years later. Consistent with the idea that exposure to an inner-city environment causes a permanent change in ideological outlook, we also find evidence that bused individuals are much less likely to believe in a "just world" (i.e., that success is earned rather than attributable to luck) and, more tentatively, that they become more supportive of some forms of redistribution. Taken together, our findings point to a poverty-centered version of the contact hypothesis, whereby witnessing economic deprivation durably sensitizes individuals to issues of inequality and fairness.

2024

1. Complexity and Satisficing: Theory with Evidence from Chess Salant, Y., and J. Spenkuch [Abstract] [PDF]

   We develop a satisficing model of choice in which the available alternatives differ in their inherent complexity. We assume—and experimentally validate—that complexity leads to errors in the perception of alternatives’ values. The model yields sharp predictions about the effect of complexity on choice probabilities, some of which qualitatively contrast with those of maximization-based choice models. We confirm the predictions of the satisficing model—and thus reject maximization—in a novel data set with information on hundreds of millions of real-world chess moves by highly experienced players. Looking beyond chess, our work offers a blueprint for incorporating complexity at the level of individual objects into models of choice and for detecting satisficing outside of the laboratory.

2. Pandering in the Shadows: How Natural Disasters Affect Special Interest Politics Kaplan, E., J. Spenkuch, and H. Yuan [Abstract] [PDF]

   We exploit the quasi-random timing of natural disasters to study the connection between public attention to politics and legislators’ support for special interests. We show that when a disaster strikes, the news media reduce both their coverage of politics in general as well as that of individual legislators in particular. At the same time, members of the House of Representatives become significantly more likely to adopt the positions of special-interest donors as they vote on bills. Taken together, the evidence implies that politicians are more inclined to take actions that benefit special interests when the public is distracted. More broadly, our findings suggest that attention to politics improves electoral accountability, even in an environment with stringent transparency and disclosure requirements.