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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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During the Khrushchev era, from 1956 through 1962, the Soviet Union attempted to implement major wage reforms intended to move Soviet industrial workers away from the mindset of overfulfilling quotas that had characterised the Soviet economy during the preceding Stalinist period and toward a more efficient financial incentive.

Throughout the Stalinist period, most Soviet workers had been paid for their work based on a piece-rate system. Thus their individual wages were directly tied to the amount of work they produced. This policy was intended to encourage workers to toil and therefore increase production as much as possible. The piece-rate system led to the growth of bureaucracy and contributed to significant inefficiencies in Soviet industry. In addition, factory managers frequently manipulated the personal production quotas given to workers to prevent workers' wages from falling too low.

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European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany

Photo credit: Dontworry

The European Central Bank (ECB) is one of the world's most important central banks, responsible for monetary policy covering the 15 member countries of the Eurozone. It was established by the European Union (EU) in 1998 with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.

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Moscow, the financial center of Russia

The economy of Russia has gradually transformed from a planned economy into a mixed market-oriented economy. It has enormous natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas. In 2023, it was the world's 11th-largest economy by nominal GDP, 6th-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) according to IMF, and 5th-largest according to World Bank. Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, Russia's GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates sharply. Russia was the last major economy to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), becoming a member in 2012.

Russia's vast geography is an important determinant of its economic activity, with the country holding a large share of the world's natural resources. It has been widely described as an energy superpower; as it has the world's largest natural gas reserves, 2nd-largest coal reserves, 8th-largest oil reserves, and the largest oil shale reserves in Europe. It is the world's leading natural gas exporter, the 2nd-largest natural gas producer, the 2nd-largest oil exporter and producer and third largest coal exporter. Russia's foreign exchange reserves are the world's 4th-largest. It has a labour force of roughly 70 million people, which is the world's 7th-largest. Russia is the world's 3rd-largest exporter of arms. The oil and gas sector accounted up to roughly 34% of Russia's federal budget revenues, and up to 54% of its exports in 2021. (Full article...)

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Again, labor and capital can never be reconciled as long as labor persists in thinking that there is a capitalist point of view and capitalists that there is a labor point of view. There is not. These are imaginary wholes which must be broken up before capital and labor can cooperate. Or when you label a man a farmer or an artisan and then treat him as if his action tendencies were all farmer or artisan you make a grave mistake. You have to break him up into a number of things, I mean of course a number of activities. Parts, aspects, factors, elements — all these words are too static; we must differentiate into activities. The man sitting next me on a certain board represented the public. Have you a preconceived idea that the man who represents the public represents social interests. This man was part owner of a leather business, he was president of a bank and it was a year (1919) when the scarcity of money and the difficulty of getting credit affected more than usual the relation between banker and employer; he was a Mason, he was a member of the Presbyterian church, etc. All these things influenced him.

—Mary Parker Follett, Creative experience, 1924

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

... that Celine-Marie Pascale's work focuses on how race and class impact the way "business practices and government policies create, normalize and entrench economic struggles" to benefit the wealthy?
... that Ruffian Games co-developed Kinect games to stay in business after the release of Crackdown 2?
... that Dolly Johnson, who had once been a slave of 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson, opened her own bakery business in 1881?
... that businessman Usman Ja'far was the first locally born governor of
... that the creator of Comic Sans also designed a levitating man in a business suit?
... 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?

On this day in business history

May 27:

1836 - Jay Gould, a leading American railroad developer and speculator, was born on this day.

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General images

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

Image 11/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288 (from Corporation)
Image 2Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 3Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
Image 4Lindley 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 5Time required to start a business in 2017 (from Business)
Image 6Emil Jellinek-Mercedes (1853–1918), here at the steering wheel of his Phoenix Double-Phaeton (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 7In 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 8Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 9McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world. (from Corporation)
Image 10Plaque in London commemorating Jewish entrepreneur Sir Jack Cohen who in 1919 founded Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK. (from Entrepreneurship)
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 12Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
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.