Quantifying shrinking and boundedly complete bases

We investigate possible quantifications of R. C. James’ classical work on bases and reflexivity of Banach spaces. By introducing new quantities measuring how far a basic sequence is from being shrinking and/or boundedly complete, we prove quantitative versions of James’ famous characterisations of reflexivity in terms of bases. Furthermore, we establish quantitative versions of James’ characterisations of reflexivity of Banach spaces with unconditional bases.