Over the past decades, the world has witnessed an unprecedented growth in global value chains due to intensified competition, institutional changes and reduced trade costs. These trends lead to concerns about the impact of value chains on domestic firms as well as on the economic development of the participating countries. This book offers the empirical evidence and policy insights on the economic effects of the value chains by focusing on the trade of intermediates in four ASEAN countries (i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand). The tremendous upsurge in the intermediates trade has resulted in the formation of regional value chains in the ASEAN region. However, recent developments are challenging with the strong emergence of China, hence, changes are expected in the bilateral trade relationship between ASEAN-4, China and Japan as major trading partners. Therefore, the bilateral trade relations in the Asian value chain are an interesting, timely and significant issue to be explored. The theoretical and empirical framework in this book makes it possible to delve into the following questions; How does final demand fluctuation influence intermediates imports? How does weighted value-added import prices of intermediates affect the intermediates ratio? and how does trade in intermediate affect business cycle synchronization? It provides theoretical and empirically based policy-relevant tools to understand international production and trade in the modern global economy. Comprising empirically rich and innovative research, this book will be critical reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in international trade. Academics researching and teaching in these fields will also benefit from this book's comprehensive approach to global value chains analysis.