The greater competition and concentration in South Africa's financial sector has put South African banks under more constraints and led to questioning of their present performance. With a greater demand for financial services and more complains about the low quality of financial services and...

In this paper we argue that traditional measures of openness of an economy usually overstate the actual degree of openness. This is due to the fact that traditional export or import shares are measured as a share of the gross domestic product. The former are expressed in gross terms, the latter...

Summary This study develops innovative measures of openness towards bilateral trade. The most widely applied openness indices are not able to accurately calculate the degree of trade openness. For example, the intra-regional export ratio which relates the value of exports of an integration area...

This study re-assesses regional integration by taking new measures for the degree of openness into account. The value-added based economic integration (VEI) model which improves on traditional economic integration models forms the core of these openness indicators. We show that a shift from the...

This study develops innovative measures of openness towards bilateral trade. The most widely applied openness indices are not able to accurately calculate the degree of trade openness. For example, the intra-regional export ratio which relates the value of exports of an integration area to the...