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📢 New paper out in the #JournalofHumanCapital with #AgataGalkiewicz and #ThomasSiedler Can starting an exam with a difficult question hurt students’ performance? We find no evidence that it does — even in incentivized assessments under time pressure.

4/9/26, 8:25 am4 reposts13 likes

Jan Marcus

@janmarcus.de

4 Sept

We use a unique dataset from @mcempirics.bsky.social covering 8,000+ online tests and exams, 45 randomized field experiments, and students in economics, econometrics, and statistics at two large German universities.

Jan Marcus

@janmarcus.de

4 Sept

@mcempirics.bsky.social is an e-learning platform developed by my co-author #ThomasSiedler, primarily for economics students and lecturers. The data allow us to study question-order effects in real-world assessments at an unusually large scale.

Jan Marcus

@janmarcus.de

4 Sept

The takeaway: randomizing question order can help reduce cheating without hurting students’ overall performance.

Jan Marcus

@janmarcus.de

4 Sept

📄 Original paper in the Journal of Human Capital: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... 🔓 Ungated version: www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10... #EconTwitter #EducationEconomics #OpenScience #mcEmpirics