165:. He explains that the sharedness of human culture means that it is cumulative in character. Once a certain invention has been made, it can jump from one mind to another (by means of imitation) and thus a whole population can acquire a new trait (and so the ratchet has gone "up" one tooth). Comparative psychologist Claudio Tennie, Tomasello, and Josep Call call this the "cultural ratchet" and they describe it, amongst primates, as being unique to human culture.
137:. The producers observe that since incentive is readjusted based on their production, any increase in production confers only a temporary increase in incentive while requiring a permanently greater expenditure of work. They therefore decide not to reveal hidden production capacity unless forced to do so.
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Rollback is the liberalisation process by which the reduction and eventual elimination of nonconforming measures to the MAI would take place. It is a dynamic element linked with standstill, which provides its starting point. Combined with standstill, it would produce a "ratchet effect", where any new
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that become ever harder to terminate. Successive generations of home appliances gradually acquire more features; new editions of software acquire more features; and so on. With all of these goods, there is ongoing debate as to whether the added features truly improve usability, or simply increase the
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Receptors which initiate cell fate transduction cascades, in early embryo development, exhibit a ratchet effect in response to morphogen concentrations. The low receptor occupancy permits increases in receptor occupancy which alter the cell fate, but the high receptor affinity does not allow ligand
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which resist reform or dismantling. In workplaces, "ratchet effects refer to the tendency for central controllers to base next year's targets on last year's performance, meaning that managers who expect still to be in place in the next target period have a perverse incentive not to exceed targets
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The ratchet effect can be seen in long-term trends in the production of many consumer goods. Year by year, automobiles gradually acquire more features. 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
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Jean Tirole used the concept in his pioneering work on regulation and monopolies. 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
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In software development, products which compete often will use specification lists of competitive products to add features, presuming that they must provide all of the features of the competitive product, plus add additional functionality. This can lead to
77:'s 1961 report "The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom." Peacock and Wiseman found that public spending increases like a ratchet following periods of crisis.
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that allows movement in one direction and seizes or tightens in the opposite. The concept has been applied to multiple fields of study and is related to the phenomena of
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shortage that drives costs up radically). University textbook publishers gradually get "stuck" in producing books that have excess content and features.
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huge bureaucratic organizations created initially for temporary needs, such as wartime measures, natural disasters, or economic crises.
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illustrating the difficulty with reversing a course of action once a specific thing has occurred, analogous with the mechanical
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highlighting
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liberalisation measures would be "locked in" so they could not be rescinded or nullified over time.
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The effect may likewise afflict large businesses with myriad layers of
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dissociation leading to a cell fate of a lower concentration.
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moving in its "forward" direction and unable to move backward.
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145:The ratchet effect is central to the mathematical
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120:keeps people alive who would otherwise die in a
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