13 November 2026 13:00 - 14:00

This event is both online and in person.

SAL 4.10, 4th Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

Online participants are welcome:
Please contact Lia Bergin (Communications and Events Assistant) l.bergin@lse.ac.uk to receive event updates and a link to the seminar online.

About this event

Honesty is perceived as fundamental to societal functioning, motivating education systems worldwide to enforce strict oversight and impose heavy penalties for dishonest behavior. Yet much academic misconduct remains unexposed, and its broader consequences are further obscured by the sorting of individuals into careers based on probity. Applying advanced plagiarism-detection algorithms to half a million publicly available graduate dissertations in China, we uncover previously hidden misconduct and validate it against incentivized measures of honesty. Linking plagiarism records to rich administrative data, we document four main findings. First, plagiarism is pervasive and predicts adverse political selection: plagiarists are more likely to enter and advance in the public sector. Second, plagiarists perform worse when holding power: focusing on the judiciary and exploiting quasi-random case assignments, we find that judges with plagiarism histories issue more preferential and lower-quality rulings ? effects muted by trial livestreaming. Third, plagiarizing judges generate spillovers to other judges and lawyers. Fourth, exploiting the staggered adoption of detection tools, we demonstrate that enforcing academic integrity leads to no change in political selection and modest improvements in subsequent professional conduct

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

Directions

This event will take place in SAL 4.10, 4th Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

Online participants are welcome:
Please contact Lia Bergin (Communications and Events Assistant) l.bergin@lse.ac.uk to receive event updates and a link to the seminar online.

The building is labelled SAL on the LSE campus map. You can also find us on Google Maps. For further information, go to contact us.

European Seminars on the Economics of Crime are part of the CEP's Crime Research Group.