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Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company such as a corporation or cooperative. Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably. (Full article...)

Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌiːkə-/) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses the economy as a system where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and investment expenditure interact, and factors affecting it: factors of production, such as labour, capital, land, and enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. (Full article...)

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The Million Dollar Homepage is a website conceived in 2005 by 21-year-old student Alex Tew from Wiltshire, England, to raise money for his university education. The home page consists of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid; the image-based links on it were sold for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks. The purchasers of these pixel blocks provided tiny images to be displayed on them, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to which the images were linked, and a slogan to be displayed when hovering a cursor over the link. The aim of the site was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating a million dollars of income for the creator. The Wall Street Journal has commented that the site inspired other websites that sell pixels. Launched on 26 August 2005, the website became an Internet phenomenon. The Alexa ranking of web traffic peaked at around 127; as of 9 May 2009, it is 40,044. On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross income. During the January 2006 auction, the website was subject to a distributed denial-of-service attack and ransom demand, which left it inaccessible to visitors for a week while its security system was upgraded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Wiltshire Constabulary investigated the attack and extortion attempt.

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Photo credit: Genghiskhanviet

The Central Bank of Brazil (Portuguese: Banco Central do Brasil) is Brazil's central bank. It was established on December 31, 1964.

The Central Bank is linked with the Ministry of Finance. Like other central banks, the Brazilian central bank is the principal monetary authority of the country. It received this authority when it was founded by three different institutions: the Bureau of Currency and Credit (SUMOC), the Bank of Brazil (BB), and the National Treasury.

One of the main instruments of Brazil's monetary policy is the Banco Central do Brasil's overnight rate, called the SELIC rate.

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The economy of Monaco is reliant on tourism and banking. Monaco, situated on the French coast of the Mediterranean Sea, is a popular resort, attracting tourists to its casino and pleasant climate.

The Principality has successfully sought to diversify into services and small, high-value-added, nonpolluting industries. The state has no income tax and low business taxes and thrives as a tax haven both for individuals who have established residence and for foreign companies that have set up businesses and offices. The state retains monopolies in a number of sectors, including gambling, tobacco, the telephone network, and the postal service. (Full article...)

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Again, if expenses are too great, and it seems impossible to meet competition, there is seldom any serious effort made to find out why expenses are too high, but it is assumed that the way out of the difficulty is to reduce wages. It never appears to occur to a manager that perhaps the cause of the excessive expense may not lie with the workman, but with the management. Managers rarely seem to suspect that, if the workmen were more intelligently directed, the output per man might be largely increased without a corresponding increase in expense.

Those who have given even superficial study to the subject are beginning to realize the enormous gain that can be made in the efficiency of workmen, if they are properly directed and provided with proper appliances. Few, however, have realized another fact of equal importance, namely, that to maintain permanently this increase of efficiency, the workman must be allowed a portion of the benefit derived from it.

To obtain this high degree of efficiency successfully, however, the same careful scientific analysis and investigation must be applied to every labor detail as the chemist or biologist applies to his work. Wherever this has been done, it has been found possible to reduce expenses, and, at the same time, to increase wages, producing a condition satisfactory to both employer and employee.

The great difficulty in instituting this method of dealing with labor questions is that usually neither employer nor employee has sufficient knowledge of the scientific method to realize either the amount of detail work necessary, or the extent of the benefits to bo derived from it. In general, their inclination is to adhere to the methods with which they are familiar, and to distrust all others, even though their methods have failed to bring them appreciably nearer the solution of their problems, and the newer methods have produced results far more satisfactory than they even hoped for. A scientific investigation into the details of a condition that has grown up unassisted by science has never yet failed to show that economies and improvements are feasible that benefit both parties to an extent unsuspected by either.

—Henry Gantt, Work, wages, and profits, 1913

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Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Roddie Fleming was expecting to inherit the family business, but it was sold to Chase Bank instead?
... that businessman and activist Matthew Glover's charity challenged Pope Francis to become a vegan for Lent?
... that Garretson, South Dakota, was named after businessman Arthur Samuel Garretson?
... that Francois Massaquoi, who studied economics at New York University, later led the Lofa Defense Force during the First Liberian Civil War?
... that the first batch of Action Computer Enterprise's Discovery 1600, one of the first multi-user microcomputers, was delivered to a tobacco-growing business in Thailand?
... that "gig" in "gig economy" comes from the slang term for individual appearances by performing artists?

On this day in business history

June 1:

1980 - Arthur Nielsen, an American businessman, founder of the ACNielsen company, died on this day.

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General images

The following are images from various business-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Lindley LJ was the leading expert on partnerships and company law in the Salomon v. Salomon & Co. case. The landmark case confirmed the distinct corporate identity of the company. (from Corporation)
Image 2McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world. (from Corporation)
Image 31/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288 (from Corporation)
Image 4Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 5"Jack and the Giant Joint-Stock", a cartoon in Town Talk (1858) satirizing the 'monster' joint-stock economy that came into being after the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844 (from Corporation)
Image 6Time required to start a business in 2017 (from Business)
Image 7Emil Jellinek-Mercedes (1853–1918), here at the steering wheel of his Phoenix Double-Phaeton (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 8Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
Image 9Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 10Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
Image 11In 2012, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer greets participants in an African Women's Entrepreneurship Program at the State Department in Washington, D.C. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 12Chart of the South Sea Company's stock prices. The rapid inflation of the stock value in the 1710s led to the Bubble Act 1720, which restricted the establishment of companies without a royal charter. (from Corporation)
Image 13Plaque in London commemorating Jewish entrepreneur Sir Jack Cohen who in 1919 founded Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK. (from Entrepreneurship)

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More did you know

...that Gold Fixing is the procedure by which the price of gold is set on the London market by the five members of the London Bullion Market Association?

...that the Heroninos Archive contains examples of a complex and standardized system of accounting used in 3rd century Roman Egypt?

...that Jerry White, cofounder of the Landmine Survivors Network, delivered the 2005 commencement address at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business?

...that the melting and export of cents and nickels can be punished with a fine of up to $10,000 and/or imprisoned for a maximum of five years?

...that the Vatican City, has an Automated teller machine (ATM) with instructions in Latin?

... that the GDP deflator (implicit price deflator for GDP) is a price index measuring changes in prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy.