Portal:Business


The Business and Economics Portal

The time required to start a business is the number of calendar days needed to complete the procedures to legally operate a business. This chart is from 2017 statistics.
Small business vendors at a public market

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 except for limited liability company. 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 the basic elements of economies, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of those interactions. Individual agents may include households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and investment expenditure interact; and the factors of production affecting them, such as: labour, capital, land, and enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that impact these elements. It also seeks to analyse and describe the global economy. (Full article...)

Selected article

J.P. Morgan's acquisition of Carnegie Steel Company in 1901 represents arguably the first true modern buyout

The history of private equity and venture capital and the development of these asset classes has occurred through a series of boom and bust cycles since the middle of the 20th century. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel although interrelated tracks.

Since the origins of the modern private equity industry in 1946, there have been four major epochs marked by three boom and bust cycles. The early history of private equity — from 1946 through 1981 — was characterized by relatively small volumes of private equity investment, rudimentary firm organizations and limited awareness of and familiarity with the private equity industry. The first boom and bust cycle — from 1982 through 1993 — was characterized by the dramatic surge in leveraged buyout activity financed by junk bonds and culminating in the massive buyout of RJR Nabisco before the near collapse of the leveraged buyout industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The second boom and bust cycle (from 1992 through 2002) emerged out of the ashes of the savings and loan crisis, the insider trading scandals, the real estate market collapse and the recession of the early 1990s. This period saw the emergence of more institutionalized private equity firms, ultimately culminating in the massive Dot-com bubble in 1999 and 2000. The third boom and bust cycle (from 2003 through 2007) came in the wake of the collapse of the Dot-com bubble—leveraged buyouts reach unparalleled size and the institutionalization of private equity firms is exemplified by the Blackstone Group's 2007 initial public offering.

In its early years through roughly the year 2000, the history of the private equity and venture capital asset classes is best described through a narrative of developments in the United States as private equity in Europe consistently lagged behind the North American industry. With the second private equity boom in the mid-1990s and liberalization of regulation for institutional investors in Europe, the emergence of a mature European private equity market has occurred.

Selected image

A supermarket in North America.
Photo credit: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine

A supermarket, a large form of the traditional grocery store, is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food and household products, organized into aisles. It is larger in size and has a wider selection than a traditional grocery store, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market.

Selected economy

The Greater São Paulo has the largest gross metropolitan product in South America.

South America has a diversified developing economy across the fourth-largest continental land-mass in the world. It comprises approximately 434 million people living in the 12 sovereign states and three dependent territories of South America, which encompasses 6 percent of the world's population. In 2025, South America ranks fourth in terms of nominal GDP by continent, behind Europe and after Africa and Oceania.

South America has two major trade blocks: Mercosur and the Andean Community. Brazil is the largest economy in South America in terms of nominal GDP. (Full article...)

Selected quote

"The ordinary expence of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expence. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted. The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. By means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes, to raise annually the largest possible sum of money. In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war."

—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Topics


  • ... that an Idaho TV station warned businesses, "The rumors of our going dark are not unfounded"?
  • ... that former Nazi officer Reinhard Höhn founded a business school after the Second World War?
  • ... that the Sam Kee Building, recognized by Guinness World Records as the narrowest commercial building in the world, was built on a bet between two businessmen?
  • ... that Japanese businessman Yasuyoshi Kato used embezzled funds to support his wife, who bought twenty Arabian horses, several emus, llamas, potbellied pigs, miniature cattle, and nurse sharks?
  • ... that Mary Mellor argued that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the impact of the patriarchy on women, both at home and in the wider economy?
  • ... that Anne Chow, who trained at Juilliard, was the first woman of color to be the CEO of an AT&T business unit?

On this day in business history

November 10:

General images

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

More did you know

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

Business news

9 November 2026 –
The South Korean Fair Trade Commission issues fines of ₩331.1 billion (US$247 million) for Woowa Brothers and ₩300.8 billion ($222 million) for Coupang, finding that their food-delivery platforms restricted competition by requiring restaurants to match rival platforms' terms. (AFP via France 24)
5 November 2026 –
Mexico approves the Digital Economy Act for Digital and Electronic Payments, which allows it to designate sectors in which digital payments are the only accepted means of payment. (N+ in Spanish)
3 November 2026 – 2026 United States elections
Keisha Lance Bottoms defeats Rick Jackson in the gubernatorial election in Georgia, becoming the first black woman to be elected governor in U.S. history. (AP)
1 November 2026 – 2026 Palm Beach County Learjet 60 crash
Nine people are killed after a Learjet 60 business jet bound for The Bahamas crashes in Greenacres, Florida, United States. (Reuters)
26 October 2026 –
A Swiss court convicts former Belarusian security officer Yuri Harauski over the 1999 abduction of businessman Anatol Krasouski, later killed, and gives him a two-year suspended sentence. He is acquitted over Yury Zacharanka's enforced disappearance. (Reuters)
21 October 2026 –
A Tunisian military court sentences politician and businesswoman Olfa Hamdi to four years in prison on state security charges linked to social media posts, including accusations of inciting military personnel to disobey orders. (AFP via Arab News)

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