Portal:Business

Ma in 2018

Jack Ma Yun (Chinese: 马云; pinyin: Mǎ Yún; born September 10, 1964) is a Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the co-founder of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate. In addition, Ma is also the co-founder of Yunfeng Capital, a Chinese private equity firm. , with a net worth of $30.1 billion, Ma is the sixth-wealthiest person in China, as well as the 50th wealthiest person in the world, ranked by Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Ma earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in English upon graduating from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988. He became an English lecturer and international trade lecturer at Hangzhou Dianzi University following graduation. The rise and expansion of the software and personal-computer industries during the 1980s captured Ma's attention, prompting him to develop an interest in the nascent internet industry. Demonstrating such a propensity led him into the realm of internet entrepreneurship where he embarked on establishing his first business in 1994, subsequently resulting in the formation of a second company upon acquiring a deeper understanding of the internet's emergence and the promising commercial prospects it offered. From 1998 to 1999, he resigned from China Telecommunications Corporation, later starting the Alibaba Group with his colleagues in 1999. The company was initially founded as a B2B e-commerce marketplace website, yet the company later expanded into a wide range of industry domains across the Chinese economy, including e-commerce, high-technology, and online payment solutions.

Zuidas in Amsterdam

The economy of the Netherlands is a highly developed market economy focused on trade and logistics, manufacturing, services, innovation and technology and sustainable and renewable energy. It is the world's 18th largest economy by nominal GDP and the 28th largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) and is the fifth largest economy in European Union by nominal GDP. It has the world's 11th highest per capita GDP (nominal) and the 13th highest per capita GDP (PPP) as of 2023 making it one of the highest earning nations in the world. Many of the world's largest tech companies are based in its capital Amsterdam or have established their European headquarters in the city, such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Cisco, Uber, Netflix and Tesla. Its second largest city Rotterdam is a major trade, logistics and economic center of the world and is Europe's largest seaport. Netherlands is ranked fifth on global innovation index and fourth on the Global Competitiveness Report.

The Netherlands has a prosperous and open economy, which depends heavily on foreign trade. The economy is noted for stable industrial relations, fairly low unemployment and inflation, a sizable current account surplus (which, compared to the size of the country, is even more than Germany) and an important role as a European transportation hub; Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe; and Amsterdam has one of the biggest airports in the world. Industrial activity is predominantly in food processing, chemicals, petroleum refining, high-tech, financial services, the creative sector and electrical machinery. Its highly mechanized agricultural sector employs no more than 2% of the labor force but provides large surpluses for the food-processing industry and for exports. The Netherlands, along with 11 of its EU partners, began circulating the euro currency on 1 January 2002. (Full article...)

"At the same time, pecuniary externalities have significant welfare consequences when there are distortions in the economy (e.g., from monopolies, technological externalities, or distorting taxes). An important determinant of the optimal tax on one commodity is for instance a calculation of its indirect effect on government revenue raised from other taxes. It has not, however, been widely recognized that the distortions that arise in economies in which there is imperfect information and incomplete markets for practical purposes, all economies result in there being real welfare consequences of what would otherwise be viewed as purely pecuniary effects. As a result, economies in which there are incomplete markets and imperfect information are not, in general, constrained Pareto efficient. There exist government interventions (e.g., taxes and subsidies) that can make everyone better off. Moreover, the distortions that arise from imperfect information or incomplete markets often look analytically like externalities of the familiar technological sort, and viewing them in this way helps identify the welfare consequences of government interventions."

—Joseph Stiglitz, Externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets, 1986

• ... that railroad transportation executive William Phillips Hall was known as the "business millionaire evangelist"?
• ... that the deity in Nakodaji is considered as a business partner by businessmen?
• ... that businessman Usman Ja'far was the first locally born governor of
• ... that developmental economist Michael Lipton showed that poor farmers were more resource efficient than rich farmers?
• ... 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 Bill Post helped invent the Pop-Tart?

May 21:

• 1898 - Armand Hammer, an American physician and businessman, founder of Occidental Petroleum, was born on this day.

• ... that Italy is the third largest producer of wine in the world?

• ...that Calouste Gulbenkian was known as Mr. Five Percent because he retained 5% of the shares of Royal Dutch/Shell, the second-largest corporation in the world by revenue, which he participated in the formation of in 1907?

• ...that prospect theory was developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979 as a psychologically realistic alternative to expected utility theory?

• ...that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's publications in the 1960s and 1970s helped develop social choice theory, which first came to prominence in the work by the American economist Kenneth Arrow?

• ...that Harvard economist Susan Athey was the first female recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal?

• ...that N. Gregory Mankiw left law school after earning his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984?

• ...that "Stagflation" is a term generally attributed to British politician Iain Macleod, who coined the term in a speech to Parliament in 1965?

Wikinews Economy and business portal

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• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour