For people who want more substantive ideas about the topic: they talk about "positive leverage" and compare the situation to what you encounter in a hostage cri

For people who want more substantive ideas about the topic: they talk about "positive leverage" and compare the situation to what you encounter in a hostage crisis. In economics, this is actually called the "Patient Seller" model, or the "Rubinstein Bargaining Model" - it's a basic element of Game Theory and comes out of John Nash's famous "Nash Equilibrium" (see: Russell Crowe in the movie Beautiful Mind!). Basically, when you work in (for example) sales and have to periodically negotiate new contracts with buyers, you learn that this model is intuitive and in practice really stands up to scrutiny. Here's a quote from a good write-up on the subject: "What determines the final selling price? The key observation is that patient players give up less at each negotiating step because they see more value in future dollars. Therefore, their strategies are represented by flatter lines. Impatient players want the deal done quickly, and their strategies are represented by steeper lines." Quote Source: http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2008/07/15/why-patience-pays-off-in-negotiations/ http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2008/07/15/why-patience-pa...