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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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A Bank run (also known as a run on the bank) is a type of financial crisis. It is a panic which occurs when a large number of customers of a bank fear it is insolvent and withdraw their deposits.

A run on the bank begins when the public begins to suspect that a bank may become insolvent. As a result, individuals begin to withdraw their savings. This action can destabilize the bank to the point where it may in fact become insolvent. Banks retain only a fraction of their deposits as cash (see fractional-reserve banking): the remainder is issued as loans. As a result, no bank has enough reserves on hand to cope with more than the fraction of deposits being taken out at once, and will 'call in' the short term deposits itself has made. This can cause a shortage of Market liquidity in the short term money market.

As a bank run progresses, it generates its own momentum. As more people withdraw their deposits, the likelihood of default increases, so other individuals have more incentive to withdraw their own deposits. If many or most banks were to suffer runs at the same time, then the resulting chain of bankruptcies can cause a long economic recession.

To prevent bank runs, Central banks can prevent financial institutions from failing by:

Deposit insurance systems insure each depositor up to a certain amount, therefore the depositors' savings are protected even if the bank fails. This removes the incentive to withdraw deposits simply because others are withdrawing theirs if consumers trust the insurance system.
Central banks act as a lender of last resort. To prevent a bank run, the Central Bank guarantees that it will make short-term, high-interest loans to banks, to ensure that, if they remain economically viable, they will always have enough liquidity to honour their deposits.
Reserve ratios and Tier 1 capital thresholds both limit the proportion of deposits which a bank can loan out.

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The multimedia studio at the headquarters of Infosys Technologies Limited in Bangalore, India.

Photo credit: Indianhilbilly

Infosys is a multinational information technology company, with nine development centers in India and over 30 offices worldwide. Infosys and its subsidiaries employ over 80,501 professionals. Its annual revenues for the fiscal year 2006-2007 exceeded US$3.1 billion with a market capitalization of over US$30 billion.

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Thimphu is the largest economic centre of Bhutan.

The economy of Bhutan is based on agriculture and forestry, which provide the main livelihood for more than 60% of the population. Agriculture consists largely of subsistence farming and animal husbandry. Rugged mountains dominate the terrain and make the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult. Bhutan is among the richest by gross domestic product (nominal) per capita in South Asia, at $3,491 as of 2022, but it still places 153rd, and among the poorest in the world. The total gross domestic product is only $2,653 million, and 178th according to IMF.

Bhutan's economy is closely aligned with India's through strong trade and monetary links and dependence on India's financial assistance. Most production in the industrial sector is of the cottage industry type. Most development projects, such as road construction, rely on Indian migrant labour. Model education, social, and environment programs are underway with support from multilateral development organisations. (Full article...)

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"For a long time men failed to realize that the transition from the classical theory of value to the subjective theory of value was much more than the substitution of a more satisfactory theory of market exchange for a less satisfactory one. The classical economists met in the pursuit of their investigations an obstacle which they failed to remove, the apparent antinomy of value. Their general theory of choice and preference goes far beyond the horizon which encompassed the scope of economic problems as circumscribed by the economists from Cantillon, Hume and Adam Smith down to John Stuart Mill. It is much more merely a theory of the "economic side" of human endeavors and of man's striving for commodities and an improvement in his material well-being. It is the science of every kind of human action. Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference. The modern theory of value widens the scientific horizon and enlarges the field of economic studies. Out of the political economy of the classical school emerges the general theory of human action, praxeology. The economic or catallactic problems are embedded in a more general science, and can no longer be severed from this connection. No treatment of economic problems proper can avoid starting from acts of choice; economics becomes a part, although the hitherto best elaborated part, of a more universal science, praxeology."

—Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, 1949

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

... that the creator of Comic Sans also designed a levitating man in a business suit?
... that developmental economist Michael Lipton showed that poor farmers were more resource efficient than rich farmers?
... that in 1958, Virginia Ali and her husband Ben Ali founded Ben's Chili Bowl, a landmark Washington, D.C. restaurant where Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, and Stokely Carmichael would often eat?
... that JetBlue's CEO, Robin Hayes, flew in an airplane for the first time aged 18?
... that railroad transportation executive William Phillips Hall was known as the "business millionaire evangelist"?
... that American business executive William M. Ellinghaus helped rescue New York City from bankruptcy in the late 1970s?

On this day in business history

June 3:

1864 - Ransom E. Olds, a pioneer of the American automotive industry, was born on this day.

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General images

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

Image 1In 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 2McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world. (from Corporation)
Image 3Emil Jellinek-Mercedes (1853–1918), here at the steering wheel of his Phoenix Double-Phaeton (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 4Plaque in London commemorating Jewish entrepreneur Sir Jack Cohen who in 1919 founded Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 5Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
Image 6Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 7Chart 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 8Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 9Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
Image 101/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288 (from Corporation)
Image 11"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 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 13Time required to start a business in 2017 (from Business)

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