But at the macro-economic level what we have to remember is that every dollar earned is a dollar available to be spent or reinvested back into the economy, whoever earns it. So, at the macroeconomic level, competition – the driver of economic progress – is a positive sum game; it increases the potentially sustainable growth rate nationally, regionally, and internationally. How far each country individually is able to take advantage of this increased potential depends upon how flexibly it can adapt to changes in comparative productive advantage – which in turn depends upon the supply–side characteristics of our separate economies. But there is no doubt that we all stand to benefit. That is why I have always believed fundamentally in the principle of free trade and open capital markets which enhance  1  BIS Review 54/1999  competition. It is why I have always welcomed the rapid growth we have seen in the emerging market economies – and why incidentally I look forward to China’s accession to the WTO. We cannot then sensibly aim to obstruct structural changes. But nor can we realistically hope to avoid all shorter-term fluctuations, associated with the business cycle for example or as a result simply of random shocks. What we are looking for is a stable macro-economic framework for the economy as a whole, which will help to moderate rather than aggravate shorter-term fluctuations, and one within which change can occur in response to longer-term real economic factors, undistorted by unnecessary, erratic, movements particularly in nominal values.
It would definitely be an important reference for the SMEs. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches