Portal:Business

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Business and Economics Portal

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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

Finn Michael Westby Caspersen, Sr. (October 27, 1941 – September 7, 2009) was an American financier and philanthropist. A graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, he followed his father, Olaus Caspersen, a Norwegian immigrant to the United States, as chairman and chief executive of Beneficial Corporation, one of the largest consumer finance companies in the United States. After an $8.6 billion acquisition of Beneficial by Household International in 1998, Caspersen ran Knickerbocker Management, a private financial firm overseeing the assets of trusts and foundations.

More selected articles

Read more

Selected image

Photo credit: Genghiskhanviet

A farmers' market (also farmers market) is a physical retail market featuring foods sold directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets typically consist of booths, tables or stands, outdoors or indoors, where farmers sell fruits, vegetables, meats, and sometimes prepared foods and beverages. They are distinguished from public markets, which are generally housed in permanent structures, open year-round, and offer a variety of non-farmer/producer vendors, packaged foods and non-food products.

More selected pictures...

Read more...

Selected economy

Copenhagen

The economy of Denmark is a modern high-income and highly developed mixed economy. The economy of Denmark is dominated by the service sector with 80% of all jobs, whereas about 11% of all employees work in manufacturing and 2% in agriculture. The nominal gross national income per capita was the ninth-highest in the world at $68,827 in 2023.

Correcting for purchasing power, per capita income was Int$57,781 or 10th-highest globally. The income distribution is relatively equal but inequality has somewhat increased during the last decades. In 2017, Denmark had the seventh-lowest Gini coefficient (a measure of economic inequality) of the then 28 European Union countries. With 5,932,654 inhabitants (1 January 2023), Denmark has the 38th largest national economy in the world measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), and the 52nd largest in the world measured by purchasing power parity (PPP). Among OECD nations, Denmark has a highly efficient and strong social security system; social expenditure stood at roughly 26.2% of GDP. (Full article...)

More selected economies

Selected quote

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

...Archive

More…

Suggest

Topics

Business: Accountancy · Actuarial science · Administration · Business continuity planning · Business development · Business ethics · Business intelligence · Business model · Business process · Businesspeople · Commerce · Commercial law · Companies · Companies law · Control · Consumer behaviour · Corporate crime · Corporate social responsibility · Electronic commerce · Entrepreneurship · Family business · Fictional companies · Finance · Globalization · Industry · Information technology management · Insurance · Internal communications · International business · International trade · Logistics · Management · Market · Marketing · Market Research · Mergers and acquisitions · Operations management · Operations research · Organizational studies · Procurement · Project management · Public relations · Quality management · Retailing · Risk management · Sales · Supply Chain Management

Lists: Accounting · Business · Business law · Business management · Business theorists · Economics · Economists · Finance · Important publications · Industrial organization · Information technology management · International trade · Management · Marketing · Production · Project management · Think tanks

Related WikiProjects

WikiProjects

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

... that Indian philanthropist and business executive T. Mohandas Pai has been called the "architect of modern Manipal"?
... that the creator of Comic Sans also designed a levitating man in a business suit?
... that soprano Galina Pisarenko studied economics, English, and Norwegian at the same time she was studying to become a professional opera singer?
... that Jay Owen Light aspired to be an astronaut before becoming the dean of Harvard Business School?
... that John Blackinger quit his job as the general manager of a professional football team to work in the dairy business?
... that railroad transportation executive William Phillips Hall was known as the "business millionaire evangelist"?

On this day in business history

June 14:

1932 - Dorimène Roy Desjardins, a Canadian businesswoman, co-founder of Desjardins Group, died on this day.

More on this day

General images

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

Image 1Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 2Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 3Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
Image 4In 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 51/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288 (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 8"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 9McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world. (from Corporation)
Image 10Lindley 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 11Chart 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 12Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
Image 13Plaque in London commemorating Jewish entrepreneur Sir Jack Cohen who in 1919 founded Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK. (from Entrepreneurship)

edit

More did you know

... that Well No. 4 in the Pico Canyon Oilfield was the first commercially successful oil well in the Western United States and the longest producing oil well in the world at 114 years?

...that, unlike the accounting systems that help in the preparation of financial reports periodically, cost accounting systems and reports are not subject to rules and standards like the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles?

... that during the Great Depression, violence in Seattle's Smith Cove between longshoremen, strikebreakers and police ultimately resulted in the loss of much of the city's maritime traffic to the Port of Los Angeles?

More did you know facts