Ratchet effect

The ratchet effect first came to light in Alan Peacock and Jack Wiseman's 1961 report "The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom."

[1] The term was later expanded upon by American historian Robert Higgs in the 1987 book Crisis and Leviathan, highlighting Peacock and Wiseman's research as it relates to governments experiencing difficulty in rolling back huge bureaucratic organizations created initially for temporary needs, such as wartime measures, natural disasters, or economic crises.

"[4] Garrett Hardin, a biologist and environmentalist, used the phrase to describe how food aid keeps people alive who would otherwise die in a famine.

The ratchet effect can denote an economic strategy arising in an environment where incentive depends on both current and past production, such as in a competitive industry employing piece rates.

In 1999 comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello used the ratchet effect metaphor to shed light on the evolution of culture.

[8] Receptors which initiate cell fate transduction cascades, in early embryo development, exhibit a ratchet effect in response to morphogen concentrations.

Competitive pressures make it hard for manufacturers to cut back on the features unless forced by a true scarcity of raw materials (e.g., an oil shortage that drives costs up radically).