Where does wedge collide?

In structural geology an accretionary (or orogenic) wedge is the roughly triangular, tapering pile of rock and sediment scraped off and stacked up where one tectonic plate thrusts beneath or against another, thickening toward the back and thinning to a toe at the front. Davis, Suppe, and Dahlen modelled it as a critically tapered body that deforms like a wedge of soil or snow pushed ahead of a bulldozer, its surface slope set by the balance of internal strength against basal friction. The referent is a deformed geological body with a characteristic cross-sectional shape, nothing like a price gap or a hand tool apart from the shared outline.[1]

Unit

The taper angle and cross-sectional geometry of the deformed rock mass

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Characterised by surface slope and basal dip (the critical taper) and by the strength and pore pressure that set them

In economics a wedge is the gap that a friction or distortion drives between two quantities that would be equal in a frictionless market, for example the tax wedge between the price a buyer pays and the price a seller keeps, or the labour and investment "wedges" that business-cycle accounting uses to stand in for whatever is pulling an economy away from its efficient benchmark. Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan formalised these wedges as measurable deviations in a standard model and used them to diagnose downturns. The referent is a measured gap between prices or marginal rates, not a rock mass or a tool.[2]

Unit

The gap, in price or rate terms, between two quantities a friction separates

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Measured as the difference between the two prices or marginal rates, or backed out as residual wedges in a calibrated model