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TOPIC:
POWER, COALITION FORMATION AND THE STABILITY OF HIERARCHIES
ABSTRACT
A social hierarchy assigns a level to each individual in the society. Individuals have preferences defined over the set of hierarchies. Coalitions with enough power can move up the hierarchy by removing the incumbent coalition. We define a notion of stability for hierarchies and provide a recursive characterization of stable hierarchies. We then study two applications: preference for similarity and preference for relative power. In the former each player prefers to be closer in the hierarchy to others with her own type. In the latter players try to maximize their relative power within their level.