What do you call dynamics in which the more you have, the more you get? [duplicate]

I am looking for a term for systems or dynamics in which the ability to earn a particular resource requires having a minimum of that resource available, and grows progressively or exponentially with it. I want to do some research on “you need money to make money” situations, but applied to non economic contexts as well.

I originally posted this in the Economics Stack Exchange, thinking that there must be some economic or game theory concept that describes this, but to no luck.

P.D.: no, I’m not looking for the word “capitalism”.

Robert Merton observed that well-known and successful people often get the credit for the discoveries and inventions of more obscure colleagues, which they only copied, just because more people were familiar with their work. He called this the Matthew Effect, after Matthew 25:29:

For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

This was almost certainly written down first in the Gospel of Mark, but Matthew gets the credit because it was already better known. The name is now used in other contexts as well, such as for students who fall behind having a hard time catching up.

for a term for systems or dynamics in which the ability to earn a particular resource requires having a minimum of that resource available, and grows progressively or exponentially with it.

In engineering, we call this a positive feedback system, or feedback loop.

In other contexts, if the end result is negative, you could call it a vicious cycle, and if the end result is positive you could call it a virtuous cycle. However these terms are more often used when the chain of causality between having the resource and getting more of it is somewhat complex. Simply earning interest on savings, for example, would not be considered a virtuous cycle.

It snowballs:

Metaphorically, a snowball effect is a process that starts from an initial state of small significance and builds upon itself, becoming larger (graver, more serious), and also perhaps potentially dangerous or disastrous (a vicious circle), though it might be beneficial instead (a virtuous circle).

Wikipedia

There’s both the verb (to snowball) and the expression (snowball effect), which can be used in many different contexts and are widely understood. Here is an example related to money and investing:

And over time, the money snowballs and compounds, which is a concept I cover later in this chapter.