Are multiple-choice exams easier for economics students? A comparison of multiple-choice and "equivalent" constructed-response exam questions

Many economics students believe that multiple-choice (MC) exams are easier than constructed-response (CR) exams. If true understanding of economics is reflected by performance on CR exams, then easier MC exams would give rise to misleading measures of student understanding of economics, creating a false sense of complacency among both instructors and students. This article investigates this issue by comparing student scores on MC and "equivalent" CR questions. Our results show that, for certain types of MC questions, students do indeed score better, even after correcting for guessing, and on other types of questions, they produce similar scores. These results are unaffected by comparing males versus females or "good" versus "poor" students.