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Due to the emergence of global production networks, trade statistics have became less accurate in describing the dependence of emerging Asia on external demand. This chapter analyses, using an update of the Asian International Input–Output (AIO) table, the interdependence of emerging Asian economies, the United States, the EU15, and Japan via trade and production linkages. According to the results, we do not find evidence of the decoupling of emerging Asia from the rest of the world. On the contrary, we find evidence on increasing trade integration, both globally and regionally. Nonetheless, our analysis indicates that emerging Asia's dependence on exports is only about one-third of its GDP, that is, well below the 50% exposure suggested by trade data. This finding can be explained by the high import content of exports in these economies, which is a result of the increasing segmentation of production across the region.

Purpose – Land assembly can mitigate the negative environmental impacts of land fragmentation on urban areas, agriculture, and wildlife. However, the assembler faces several obstacles including transactions costs and the strategic bargaining behavior of landowners. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the order of bargaining and the nature of contracts may impact the land assembler's problem.

Methodology – We develop theoretical predictions of subjects' behavior and compare these to behavior in a laboratory land-assembly game with monetary incentives.

Findings – Sellers bargain more aggressively when bargaining is sequential compared to simultaneous. Noncontingent contracts increase bargaining delay and the likelihood of failed agreements. Buyers and sellers act more aggressively when there are multiple bargaining periods, leading to significant bargaining delay. When a seller has an earnings advantage in the laboratory, it is the first seller to bargain in noncontingent contract treatments. In sequential bargaining treatments, most sellers preferred to be the first seller to bargain.

Research limitations – Our laboratory experiments involved only two sellers, complete information, and costless delay. Land assembly in the field may involve many sellers, incomplete information, and costly delay.

Practical implications – Some of our results contradict conventional wisdom and a common result from the land-assembly literature that it is advantageous to be the last seller to bargain, a so-called “holdout.” Our results also imply that fully overcoming the holdout problem may require subsidies or compulsory acquisition.

Originality – This chapter is one of the first to experimentally investigate the land-assembly problem, and the first to specifically examine the role of bargaining order and contract type.

To develop a framework for systematically defining the relevant market for intermediate goods that incorporates downstream market conditions.

We combine the well-established “Hicks-Marshall” conditions of derived demand for inputs with “critical loss/critical elasticity of demand” to yield insights into the definition of antitrust markets for intermediate goods and the competitive effects from a merger.

We show that examining “Hicks-Marshall” conditions can provide a more rigorous framework for analyzing relevant markets for intermediate goods. We also show that solely examining demand substitution possibilities for direct customers of an input can lead to an incorrect market definition.

Our framework may be difficult to apply in circumstances when several different downstream products use the input being examined and each of those downstream products has a different elasticity of demand.

We illustrate how reasonable ranges for key parameters relating to the ability of firms to substitute to other inputs and to adjust to downstream market conditions will often be sufficient to define antitrust markets for intermediate goods in practice.

Previous antitrust analysis has not systematically analyzed the impact of downstream market conditions in assessing market definition for intermediate goods. The framework we develop will be useful to future researchers attempting to define relevant markets for intermediate goods and evaluating the competitive effects of a merger.

The Spain–Portugal Cross-Border Cooperation Program launched the “Espomar” project in 2017, with the aim of designing a sustainable and transboundary maritime transport system in the Gulf of Cádiz, which includes the Spanish provinces of Cádiz (its Atlantic coast) and Huelva, together with the Portuguese region of the Algarve. This chapter limits the scope to the Algarve-Huelva connection and the resident population demand. The findings suggest a maritime connection defined and marketed as part of leisure activities. The demand for potential tourism packages created around boat trips appears to be promising. The sun beach, gastronomy wine and culture landscape vectors are the main attractors.

This chapter provides a theory model of trade finance to explain the “great trade collapse.” The model shows that, first, the riskiness of international transactions rises relative to domestic transactions during economic downturns; and second, the exclusive use of a letter of credit in international transactions exacerbates a collapse in trade during a financial crisis. The basic model considers banks’ optimal screening decisions in the presence of counterparty default risks. In equilibrium, banks will maintain a higher precision screening test for domestic firms and a lower precision screening test for foreign firms, which constitutes the main mechanism of the model.

This chapter investigates the impact of the euro crisis on Asia’s short-term economic outlook. This chapter tries to answer this question by examining both the trade and financial channels of crisis transmission. More specifically, it looks at the effect of euro crisis on Asian exports and growth, contagion from EU financial markets to Asian financial markets, and influence of EU bank lending on credit growth in Asia. The chapter also touches upon Asia’s policy space to assess how well the region is positioned to weather another major external shock. This chapter finds that the impact of euro crisis on developing Asia points to a sizable but manageable short-term impact. Furthermore, our analysis points to a significant effect on the region’s financial systems, especially its banking sector. This chapter informs policymakers of the impact of the euro crisis and advice to continue to keep a close eye on eurozone developments and their ramifications for their economies.