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Economic and financial integration (hereafter, economic integration) among economies has been a fertile area of research. Yet, what we argue is that economic integration needs new thoughts to adequately model the recent challenges to the global economy by developing a new index/measure of economic integration. The new index will not only shed invaluable insights into the drivers of economic integration between Australia and the Middle East but will also help craft economic, trade, and commercial policies to achieve the desired type of integration with Australia's trading partners. Our analysis is undertaken on a cross section of 140 countries for the year 2011, to understand the causes and indicators of integration. Our model combines changes in real GDP, per capita GDP, percentage of educational expense, and gender inequality as causal factors to explain integration as a latent variable. We use three indicators of integration: (1) a standard measure of economic integration, (2) exports and imports as a percentage of GDP, (3) flows of foreign direct investment. We then explore the linkages between these indicators, or manifestations of integration, and a number of its possible causes. In terms of the new index we rank 140 nations and note that Australia is ranked among the top 20 nations in terms of integration with the global economy. Except Israel and Oman, Australia's trade partners in the Middle East have little integration with the global economy. In a similar vein, we also find that Australia's northern neighbors – especially Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India – are yet to get well-integrated with the global economy. As a result, we argue, Australia can lead these countries from Southeast Asia and the Middle East to form closer ties with the global economy via Australia and, by doing so, Australia can create unprecedented economic and social benefit.

This chapter seeks to assess if there is any evidence that overseas development assistance (ODA), through its influence upon the climate-resilient grants and development grants, has impacted Fiji's developmental goals and climate resilience as a Small Island Development State (SIDS). To broaden the framework, it develops and applies two indicators of development and climate resilience for Fiji and seeks to establish – from the time series analysis – if these indicators bear a long-term and equilibrium relationship with the ODA for Fiji. By exploiting a suitable data set, it brings three important insights into the literature on climate shocks from global warming for SIDS. There are three critical elements found from the study: first, ODA did not play any role in reducing underdevelopment (DVIT) in Fiji. Secondly, ODA played an important role in increasing sustainability, or resilience, in Fiji: an increase in ODA by 1% increased sustainability, or resilience measured by the sustainability index SUS, by 0.24% at 1% level of significance. Finally, it is noted that oil price hikes compromised Fiji's resilience or sustainability. In the short-run, both ODA and OILP compromised the sustainability of Fiji.