Previous research on cooperation has primarily focused on egalitarian interactions, overlooking a fundamental feature of social life: hierarchy and power asymmetry. While recent accounts posit that hierarchies can reduce within-group conflict, individuals who possess high rank or power tend to...

We study the optimal management of evolving hierarchies, which abound in real-life phenomena. An initiator invests into finding a subordinate, who will bring revenues to the joint venture and who will invest herself into finding another subordinate, and so on. The higher the individual...