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IZA Discussion Paper No. 12591
September 2019
External Monitors and Score Manipulation in Italian Schools: Symptomatic Treatment or Cure?

published as 'Does monitoring deter future cheating? The case of external examiners in Italian schools' in: Economics Letters, 2021, 201, 109742

We use the repeated random assignment of external examiners to school institutes in Italy to investigate whether the effect of external monitoring on test score manipulation persists over time. We find that this effect is still present in the tests taken one year after exposure to the examiners, and is stronger for open-ended questions, for small school institutes, and for institutes located in the northern and central regions of the country. In the second year after exposure, however, this effect disappears, suggesting that monitoring is a symptomatic treatment rather than a cure of score manipulation. We discuss learning, reputational concerns, peer pressure and teacher preferences as potential mechanisms behind our findings, and present some evidence on the role played by social capital and high stakes.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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