TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Lucifora, Claudio
AU  - Tonello, Marco
        TI  - Students' Cheating as a Social Interaction: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in a National Evaluation Program
        PY  - 2012/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 6967
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp6967
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - social multiplier
KW  - students' cheating
KW  - randomized experiment
        ER  -