We study the optimal design of organizations under the assumption that agents in a contest care about their relative position. A judicious definition of status categories can be used by a principal in order to influence the agents' performance. We first consider a pure status case where there...

Agents in a finite two-sided market are matched assortatively, based on costly investments. Besides signaling private, complementary types, investments generate direct benefits for partners. We explore quantitative properties of the equilibrium investment behavior. The bilateral external...