Title: Choosing the Right Pond: Status vs. Prestige in School Choice & Party Formation

Abstract: We study partitions of agents into groups in a model in which each agent cares about his rank within his group and the rank of his group relative to other groups. We characterize stable partitions when agents can form small blocking coalitions to exchange group assignments. When agents can block by freely moving to existing groups or establishing new groups, no partition is stable. We discuss applications to school choice and political-party formation.

Speaker: Dr Xinyang Wang 

Speaker bio: Xinyang Wang is an Assistant professor of Economics at  the center for economic research at the instituto technologico autonomo de Mexico (ITAM). He received his Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 2020, and has held visiting posittions at the Johns Hopkins University and Naples Federico II. He served as a junior associate editor at the Journal of Mathematical Economics, and is on the scentific committee for various conferences including international conference on public economic theory and the central european program in economic theory. He has a diverse research interest in economic theory, including coalition formation, general equilibrium, and dynamics.