Measuring Economic Openness: A review of existing measures and empirical practices

Claudius Graebner, Philipp Heimberger, Jakob Kapeller and Florian Springholz
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Claudius Graebner: Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch

No 84, ICAE Working Papers from Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy

Abstract: This paper surveys existing measures of economic openness understood as the degree to which non-domestic actors can or do participate in a domestic economy. We introduce a typology of openness indicators, which distinguishes between 'real' and 'financial' openness as well as between 'de facto' and 'de jure' measures of openness, and show that this classification indeed captures different dimensions of economic openness. The main contribution of the paper is to supply a comprehensive and novel data set of openness indicators available for interested researchers. Based on this effort, we analyze some trends in economic openness over time and provide a correlation analysis across indicators. Finally, we explore the practical implications of choosing among different openness measures within a growth regression framework and highlight that researchers should make the choice of the indicator based on explicit theoretical justifications that correspond to their specific research questions.

Keywords: Economic openness; Trade openness; financial opennes; globalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2018-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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