The Federal Communications Commission exercises broad regulatory authority over merger activity in the cable broadcast industry. In previous rule-makings and court proceedings, the Commission has emphasized concern about the potential for collusive behavior among cable operators in considering...

We construct a simultaneous bilateral bargaining model and demonstrate analytically that if bargaining power is any constant across a group of buyers, then bargaining position will not be improved through merger in the absence of relative size effects. However, differences in post-merger...