Trade and investment may be stimulated through both the market access liberalisation provisions of FTAs and improvements in the regulatory framework brought about by the FTAs which increase transparency, fairness and predictability for businesses. As a result of the facilitation of increased trade and investment flows, companies are more exposed to competition, innovation, international benchmarking and develop stronger links with international business partners. Such exposure helps drive production and maintain New Zealand companies at the leading-edge in terms of best-practice across a range of issues (innovation, technology, knowledge, research and product/service development, etc). Spillovers from this process into the domestic economy can include the generation of ongoing productivity improvements (dynamic productivity gains) across the wider economy.