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'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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. (July 8, 1839–May 23, 1937) was an American industrialist and philanthropist who played a pivotal role in the establishment of the oil industry, and defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, Rockefeller helped found the Standard Oil company. Over a forty-year period, Rockefeller built Standard Oil into the largest and most profitable company in the world, and became the world's richest man.

His business career was controversial. He was bitterly attacked by muckraking journalists; his company was convicted in the Federal Court of monopolistic practices and broken up in 1911. He gave up active management of Standard Oil in the late 1890s, while keeping a large fraction of the shares. He spent the last forty years of his life focused on philanthropic pursuits, primarily related to education and public health. He donated most of his wealth using multiple foundations run by experts. He was a devout Northern Baptist and supported many church-based institutions throughout his life.

Rockefeller may ultimately be remembered simply for the raw size of his wealth. In 1902, an audit showed Rockefeller was worth about $200 million, compared to the total national wealth that year of $101 billion. His wealth grew significantly after as the demand for gasoline soared, eventually reaching about $900 million, including significant interests in banking, shipping, mining, railroads, and other industries. By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller's remaining fortune, largely tied up in permanent family trusts, was estimated at $1.4 billion. Rockefeller's net worth over the last decades of his life would easily place him among the list of wealthiest persons in history. As a percentage of the United States economy, no other American fortune—including Bill Gates or Sam Walton—would even come close.

Selected image

An auctioneer and her assistants scan the crowd for bidders.

Photo credit: Indianhilbilly

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder. In economic theory, an auction may refer to any mechanism or set of trading rules for exchange.

More selected pictures...

Read more...

Selected economy

São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world economically, and is expected to be the 6th largest in 2025. According to data of Fecomercio/SP, its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017 was R$699.28 billion ($219.11B today).

The biggest financial center in Brazil and one of the biggest financial centers in the world, São Paulo's economy is going through a deep transformation. Once a city with a strong industrial character, São Paulo's economy has become increasingly based on the tertiary sector, focusing on services and businesses for the country. The city is also unique among Brazilian cities for its large number of foreign corporations. Many analysts point to São Paulo as an important global city, even though this assignment can be criticized considering its serious problems of social exclusion and spatial segregation. Although being the most important financial centre of the country, São Paulo also presents a high degree of informality in its economy. (Full article...)

More selected economies

Selected quote

"Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing.

Thus it is on the one side a study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man. For man's character has been moulded by his every-day work, and the material resources which he thereby procures, more than by any other influence unless it be that of his religious ideals; and the two great forming agencies of the world's history have been the religious and the economic. Here and there the ardour of the military or the artistic spirit has been for a while predominant: but religious and economic influences have nowhere been displaced from the front rank even for a time; and they have nearly always been more important than all others put together. Religious motives are more intense than economic, but their direct action seldom extends over so large a part of life. For the business by which a person earns his livelihood generally fills his thoughts during by far the greater part of those hours in which his mind is at its best; during them his character is being formed by the way in which he uses his faculties in his work, by the thoughts and the feelings which it suggests, and by his relations to his associates in work, his employers or his employees."

—Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 1890

More selected quotes

More quotes at Wikiquote

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 American business executive William M. Ellinghaus helped rescue New York City from bankruptcy in the late 1970s?
... that businessman and activist Matthew Glover's charity challenged Pope Francis to become a vegan for Lent?
... that the studios of a California TV station were converted back into a movie theater after it went out of business?
... that Chicony, known primarily as a keyboard manufacturer, entered the computer-manufacturing business with the Rabbit 286 in 1988?
... that Bill Post helped invent the Pop-Tart?
... 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 29:

1927 - Jean Coutu, a Canadian pharmacist and businessman, founder of the Jean Coutu Group, was born on this day.

General images

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

Image 1Chart 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 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 4Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
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 6Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
Image 7Time required to start a business in 2017 (from Business)
Image 81/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288 (from Corporation)
Image 9Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
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 11Lindley 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 12Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 13In 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)

edit

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.