Students' Cheating as a Social Interaction: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in a National Evaluation Program

Claudio Lucifora () and Marco Tonello

No 6967, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We analyze students' cheating behavior during a national evaluation test. We model the mechanisms that trigger cheating interactions between students and show that, when monitoring is not sufficiently accurate, a social multiplier may magnify the effects on students' achievements. We exploit a randomized experiment, which envisaged the presence of an external inspector in the administration and marking of the tests, to estimate a structural (endogenous) social multiplier in students' cheating. The empirical strategy exploits the Excess-Variance approach (Graham, 2008). We find a strong amplifying role played by social interactions within classrooms: students' cheating behaviors more than double the class average test scores results. The effects are found to be larger when students are more homogeneous in terms of parental background characteristics and social ties.

Keywords: social multiplier; students' cheating; randomized experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 D62 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published as: "Cheating and social interactions. Evidence from a randomized experiment in a national evaluation program", Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 115, 2015, 45–66

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