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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's 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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An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, published on March 9, 1776 during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. The work is also the first comprehensive defense of free market policies. It is broken down into five books between two volumes. The Wealth of Nations was written for the average educated individual of the 18th century rather than for specialists and mathematicians. There are three main concepts that Smith expands upon in this work that form the foundation of free market economics: The Division of Labor, The Pursuit of Self Interest, and The Freedom of Trade.

The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, during the Age of Enlightenment. It influenced not only authors and economists, but governments and organisations. For example, Alexander Hamilton was influenced in part by The Wealth of Nations to write his Report on Manufactures, in which he argued against many of Smith's policies. Interestingly, Hamilton based much of this report on the ideas of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and it was, in part, to Colbert's ideas that Smith wished to respond with The Wealth of Nations. Many other authors were influenced by the book and used it as a starting point in their own work, including Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and, later, Karl Marx and Ludwig von Mises. The Russian national poet Aleksandr Pushkin refers to The Wealth of Nations in his 1833 verse-novel Eugene Onegin.

Irrespective of historical influence, however, The Wealth of Nations represented a clear leap forward in the field of economics, similar to Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica for physics or Antoine Lavoisier's Traité Élémentaire de Chimie for chemistry. The Wealth of Nations is also important in a Scottish linguistic context on account of the fact the book is written in English and not in Scots Language, a somewhat rare occurrence for the time.

Smith addresses in The Wealth of Nations a problem that was torturing the best economic minds of his day. This problem was rooted in the means by which objects are valued. The two predominant theories of value in Smith's time were the so-called "Practical Theory of Value" and the labor theory of value, as delineated later by David Ricardo.

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Photo credit: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine

A supermarket, a large form of the traditional grocery store, is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food and household products, organized into aisles. It is larger in size and has a wider selection than a traditional grocery store, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market.

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1000 CVE bank note issued in 1992

The economy of Cape Verde is a service-oriented economy that is focused on commerce, trade, transport and public services. Cape Verde is a small archipelagic nation that lacks resources and has experienced severe droughts. Agriculture is made difficult by lack of rain and is restricted to only four islands for most of the year. Cape Verde's economy has been steadily growing since the late 1990s, and it is now officially considered a country of average development, being only the second African country to have achieved such transition, after Botswana in 1994. Cape Verde has significant cooperation with Portugal at every level of the economy, which has led it to link its currency (the Cape Verdean escudo) first to the Portuguese escudo and, in 1999, to the euro. (Full article...)

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"In the United States, there is a union for each job function with many unions in each company. Lathe operators are allowed to operate only lathes. A drilling job must be taken to a drilling operator. And because the operators are single-skilled, a welding job required at the lathe section cannot be done there but must be taken to a welding operator. As a consequence, there are a large number of people and machines. For American industries to achieve cost reduction under such conditions, mass production is the only answer.

When large quantities are produced, the labor cost per car and depreciation burden are reduced. This requires high-performance, high-speed machines that are both large and expensive.

This type of production is a planned mass production system in which each process makes many parts and forwards them to the next process. This method naturally generates an abundance of waste. From the time it acquired this American system until 1973 oil crisis, Japan had the illusion that this system fit their needs."

—Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System, English edition of 1988

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... that Earle M. Chiles, a businessman and philanthropist from Portland, Oregon, was also a senator of the board of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany?
... that Svalbard Minute by Minute, a 221-hour-long television broadcast, is credited with increasing tourism in Svalbard by 25 percent?
... that new employees of a business headquartered in the Editors Building chose their office decorations from a 7,000-piece collection of historic memorabilia of Washington, D.C.?
... that Malaysian businessman Lim Kok Wing was depicted as "King of Africa"?
... that American lumber businessman and politician John Barber White funded a scholarship at Williams College in memory of his son?
... that American business executive William M. Ellinghaus helped rescue New York City from bankruptcy in the late 1970s?

On this day in business history

May 17:

1868 - Horace Elgin Dodge, an American businessman, co-founder of Dodge, was born on this day.

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General images

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

Image 1Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
Image 2Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 3McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world. (from Corporation)
Image 4Emil Jellinek-Mercedes (1853–1918), here at the steering wheel of his Phoenix Double-Phaeton (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 5Time required to start a business in 2017 (from Business)
Image 61/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288 (from Corporation)
Image 7Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 8Plaque in London commemorating Jewish entrepreneur Sir Jack Cohen who in 1919 founded Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 9In 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 10Chart 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 11Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
Image 12Lindley 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 13"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)

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More did you know

...that former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers served as the World Bank Chief Economist from 1991 to 1993?

...that André Meyer quit school at age 16 to work as a messenger boy, and was later described as "the most creative financial genius of our time in the investment banking world" by David Rockefeller?

...that Valrhona, a company based in the small town of Tain l'Hermitage in the Rhône Valley in France, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-quality chocolate?

...that it is estimated that more than 85 percent of all business information exists as unstructured data, commonly appearing in e-mails, memos, reports, letters, presentations and Web pages?

... that the Automotive Electronics Council is an organisation based in the USA that sets qualification standards for the supply of components in the automotive electronics industry.

... that Hollywood accounting is the practice of distributing the profit earned by a large project to corporate entities which, though distinct from the one responsible for the project itself, are typically owned by the same people, with the net result of reducing the project's profit by a substantial margin, sometimes even eliminating it altogether.