HYSTERESISThe lost energy associated with delay.
Hysteresis is the dependence of a system not only on its current environment but also on its past environment. This dependence arises because the system can be in more than one internal state. To predict its future development, either its internal state or its history must be known.[1] If a given input alternately increases and decreases, the output tends to form a loop as in the figure. However, loops may also occur because of a dynamic lag between input and output.
Hysteresis is produced by positive feedback to avoid unwanted rapid switching. Hysteresis has been identified in many other fields, including economics and biology.
Economic systems can exhibit hysteresis. For example, export performance is subject to strong hysteresis effects: because of the fixed transportation costs it may take a big push to start a country's exports, but once the transition is made, not much may be required to keep them going.
Hysteresis is used extensively in the area of labor markets. According to theories based on hysteresis, economic downturns (recession) result in an individual becoming unemployed, losing his/her skills (commonly developed 'on the job'), demotivated/disillusioned, and employers may use time spent in unemployment as a screen. In times of an economic upturn or 'boom', the workers affected will not share in the prosperity, remaining long-term unemployed (over 52 weeks). Hysteresis has been put forward[by whom?] as a possible explanation for the poor unemployment performance of many economies in the 1990s. Labor market reform, or strong economic growth, may not therefore aid this pool of long-term unemployed, and thus specific targeted training programs are presented as a possible policy solution.
One type of hysteresis is a simple lag between input and output. A simple example would be a sinusoidal input X(t) and output Y(t)that are separated by a phase lag φ:
Such behavior can occur in linear systems, and a more general form of response is
where χi is the instantaneous response and Φd(t-τ) is the response at time t to an impulse at time τ. In the frequency domain, input and output are related by a complex generalized susceptibility.[3]
