When Teachers Break the Rules: Imitation, Reciprocity, and Community Structure in the Transmission of Ethical Behavior

Victor Lavy and Moses Shayo

No 34931, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study how teachers' rule violations in grading affect students' ethical behavior. Using administrative data from high-stakes exams, combining teacher-assigned internal scores with externally graded national exam scores, we track teacher grading violations and subsequent student cheating. We explore three potential mechanisms: imitation (learning that rules can be broken), positive reciprocity (responding favorably to favorable treatment), and negative reciprocity (retaliating against unfavorable treatment). Exploiting within-student variation in exposure to different teachers, we find students are significantly more likely to cheat when teachers break the rules to their detriment (systematically undergrading), consistent with both imitation and negative reciprocity. However, when teachers systematically overgrade, responses vary by community structure. In heterogeneous communities, overgrading increases student cheating, suggesting imitation dominates. In homogeneous communities, students respond by cheating less, consistent with positive reciprocity dominating. This pattern holds across multiple homogeneity measures, including surname concentration and residential clustering. Survey measures of mutual respect and support between students and teachers confirm this pattern.

JEL-codes: I20 J00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-inv and nep-soc
Note: CH DEV ED LS POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34931.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Working Paper: When Teachers Break the Rules: Imitation, Reciprocity, and Community Structure in the Transmission of Ethical Behavior (2026)
Working Paper: When Teachers Break the Rules: Imitation, Reciprocity, and Community Structure in the Transmission of Ethical Behavior (2026)
Working Paper: When Teachers Break the Rules: Imitation, Reciprocity, and Community Structure in the Transmission of Ethical Behavior (2026)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34931

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34931
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().