About

Jörg Spenkuch is an Associate Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He joined the Kellogg faculty in 2013 after earning his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. His research interests are in political economy and applied microeconomics, with current work focusing on decision-making in strategic environments, preference formation, and private politics. Professor Spenkuch teaches core courses in the full-time and evening & weekend MBA programs, as well as Kellogg's MBAi program. His academic background includes a B.A. in Economics and Business Administration from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, a Master's in Economics from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the same institution. He has received several awards, including the MinE Best Paper Award from the European Economic Association and the Chair's Core Teaching Award, and has been recognized as one of Germany's 'Top 40 under 40' by Capital magazine.

Research topics

• Economics
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Public administration
• Geography
• Political economy
• Public relations
• Economy
• Law
• Mathematics
• Management
• Economic geography
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Personnel is Policy: Delegation and Political Misalignment in the Rulemaking Process

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• From the Classroom to the Ballot Box: Turnout and Partisan Consequences of Education

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-10-01

  reportOpen access

  We estimate the impact of education on voter turnout and partisanship using a regression discontinuity design based on school-entry cutoffs and exact date of birth.Drawing on nationwide administrative voter registration data, we find that individuals who were slotted to enter school one year earlier are more likely to vote and more likely to register as independents.These reduced-form effects may be driven by changes in educational attainment or by differences in the quality of individuals' educational experiences.We leverage age-related heterogeneity in effect sizes to isolate the role of educational attainment.Our results imply that an additional year of schooling increases turnout by about 3 percentage points.

  PublisherDOI

• The Memory Premium

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Pandering in the Shadows: How Natural Disasters Affect Special Interest Politics

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2025-07-30 · 1 citations

  article

  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 coverage of politics in general and of individual legislators in particular, and members of the House of Representatives become significantly more likely to adopt special interest donors’ positions. The evidence implies that politicians are more inclined to take actions benefiting 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 requirements. (JEL D72, L82, Q54)

  PublisherDOI

• The Memory Premium

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• From the Classroom to the Ballot Box: Turnout and Partisan Consequences of Education

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Complexity and Satisficing: Theory with Evidence from Chess

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2025-05-26 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract 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.

  PublisherDOI

• The Memory Premium

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A Different World: Enduring Effects of School Desegregation on Ideology and Attitudes

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A Different World: Enduring Effects of School Desegregation on Ideology and Attitudes

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01

  reportOpen access

  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 quasirandom 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 imply that witnessing economic deprivation can durably sensitize individuals to issues of inequality and fairness.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Roland G. Fryer

  Harvard University

  37 shared

• Philipp Tillmann

  Film Independent

  26 shared

• Steven D. Levitt

  University of Chicago

  25 shared

• Lisa Kahn

  University of Rochester

  23 shared

• Anthony Fowler

  17 shared

• Haritz Garro

  Meta (United States)

  17 shared

• Kevin Murphy

  Washington State University

  8 shared

• Gary S. Becker

  6 shared

Awards & honors

• MinE Best Paper Award, European Economic Association
• Chair's Core Teaching Award
• Deutschlands "Top 40 unter 40", Capital (Germany)
• FEEM Award, European Economic Association
• Best Paper Award, RGS Doctoral Conference