Bargaining power of a coalition in parallel bargaining: advantage of multiple cable system operators

The paper shows that integrating two players on the same side of two independent bilateral monopoly markets can increase their bargaining power. A leading example of such a situation is bargaining between cable operators and broadcasters regarding the carriage of broadcasters. signals on cable systems in two separate markets. From the modeling point of view, one innovation the paper introduces is to generate a coalition.s preferences by aggregating the preferences of its members.