DETERMINANTS AND EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC OPENNESS

International trade cannot exist without the economic openness of the countries involved. The process in itself is hard to be captured in definitions because it implies aspects related to external trade, exchange rate evolution or macroeconomic policies. The present article first concentrates on a short definition of the concept of economic openness. Then we focus the attention on some economic factors that may conduct to the economic openness of a country, such as: exchange rate volatility, input endowments or level of technology. The last part of the paper is allocated to presenting few positive and negative effects of opening towards the mechanisms of the world economy, followed by some concluding remarks.