Instrumental Cardinal Concerns for Social Status in Two-Sided Matching with NonTransferable Utility

In this paper we apply the instrumental approach to social preferences in order to
distinguish among various shapes of preferences for social status. In particular, we
consider the shape of reduced preferences that emerge in the equilibrium of a twosided matching model with non-transferable utility. Cole et al. (1992, 1995) show that,
under full observability of potential mates’ attributes, instrumental concerns for social
status are ordinal, i.e., only one’s own rank in the distribution of attributes matters.
We show that when we depart from full observability, instrumental concerns for social
status become cardinal, i.e., also other features of the distribution of attributes matter.
We also show that the actual shape of cardinal concerns depends on how individuals
can deal with the informational asymmetry, alternatively leading to upward concerns –
i.e., making comparisons with higher rank people – downward concerns – i.e., making
comparisons with lower rank people – or bidirectional concerns – i.e, being both upward
and downward.