Guerra-Pujol on Bargaining and Betrayal in "Breaking Bad"

Enrique Guerra-Pujol, University of Central Florida and Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, has published So Long Suckers: Bargaining and Betrayal in Breaking Bad. Here is the abstract.

This short paper explores a number of commonalities between the bargaining game "So Long Sucker" and the critically acclaimed TV series "Breaking Bad". In brief, "So Long Sucker" has been variously described as "a dog-eat-dog world" (Anatol Rapoport), "vicious" (William Poundstone), "anti-chess" (D. Graham Burnett), and "fiendish" (Peter Tannenbaum). That these dire terms equally describe the meth underworld as depicted in Breaking Bad is no coincidence, for the game "So Long Sucker" and the meth trade in Breaking Bad both share a number of commonalities. In both worlds agreements are unenforceable; double crosses, recurrent; victory, elusive. Moreover, these commonalities raise deeper questions about the nature of morality in such a "society of ruffians," questions we explore in the conclusion of this paper.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.