  Given an integer m>=1, let || || be a norm in R^{m+1} and let S denote the
set of points with nonnegative coordinates in the unit sphere with respect to
this norm. Consider for each 1<= j<= m a function f_j(z) that is analytic in an
open neighborhood of the point z=0 in the complex plane and with possibly
negative Taylor coefficients. Given a vector n=(n_0,...,n_m) with nonnegative
integer coefficients, we develop a method to systematically associate a
parameter-varying integral to study the asymptotic behavior of the coefficient
of z^{n_0} of the Taylor series of (f_1(z))^{n_1}...(f_m(z))^{n_m}, as ||n||
tends to infinity. The associated parameter-varying integral has a phase term
with well specified properties that make the asymptotic analysis of the
integral amenable to saddle-point methods: for many directions d in S, these
methods ensure uniform asymptotic expansions for the Taylor coefficient of
z^{n_0} of (f_1(z))^{n_1}...(f_m(z))^{n_m}, provided that n/||n|| stays
sufficiently close to d as ||n|| blows up to infinity. Our method finds
applications in studying the asymptotic behavior of the coefficients of a
certain multivariable generating functions as well as in problems related to
the Lagrange inversion formula for instance in the context random planar maps.
