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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.

Business is the activity of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services).^{[need quotation to verify]} Simply put, it is "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

Having a business name does not separate the business entity from the owner, which means that the owner of the business is responsible and liable for debts incurred by the business. If the business acquires debts, the creditors can go after the owner's personal possessions. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

The term is also often used colloquially (but not by lawyers or by public officials) to refer to a company. A company, on the other hand, is a separate legal entity and provides for limited liability, as well as corporate tax rates. A company structure is more complicated and expensive to set up, but offers more protection and benefits for the owner. (Full article...)

Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌiːkə-/) is "the 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. Within mainstream economics, microeconomics is a field which analyzes 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 analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. (Full article...)

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The Octopus card is a reusable contactless stored value smart card for making electronic payments in online or offline systems in Hong Kong. Launched in September 1997 to collect fares for the territory's mass transit system, the Octopus card system is the second contactless smart card system in the world, after the Korean Upass, and has since grown into a widely used payment system for all public transport in Hong Kong, leading to the development of Oyster Card in London.

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Village fair by Flemish artist Gillis Mostaert,1590

A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people to display or trade produce or other goods, to parade or display animals and often to enjoy associated traveling carnival or travelling funfair entertainment. It is normally of the essence of a fair that it is temporary; some last only an afternoon while others may last as long as ten weeks. Activities at fairs vary widely. Some trade fairs are important regular business events either where products are traded between businesspeople, as at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where publishers sell book rights in other markets to other publishers, or where products are showcased to consumers, as for example in agricultural districts where they present opportunities to display and demonstrate the latest machinery on the market to farmers.

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Nuuk skyline at night

The economy of Greenland can be characterized as small, mixed and vulnerable. Greenland's economy consists of a large public sector and comprehensive foreign trade. This has resulted in an economy with periods of strong growth, considerable inflation, unemployment problems and extreme dependence on capital inflow from the Kingdom Government.

GDP per capita is close to the average for European economies, but the economy is critically dependent upon substantial support from the Danish government, which supplies about half the revenues of the Self-rule Government, which in turn employs 10,307 Greenlanders out of 25,620 currently in employment (2015). Unemployment nonetheless remains high, with the rest of the economy dependent upon demand for exports of shrimp and fish. (Full article...)

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"However no decentralized pricing system can serve to determine optimally these levels of collective consumption. Other kinds of "voting" or "signalling" would have to be tried. But, and this is the point sensed by Wicksell but perhaps not fully appreciated by Lindahl, now it is in the selfish interest of each person to give false signals, to pretend to have less interest in a given collective consumption activity than he really has, etc. I must emphasize this: taxing according to a benefit theory of taxation can not at all solve the computational problem in the decentralized manner possible for the first category of "private" goods to which the ordinary market pricing applies and which do not have the "external effects" basic to the very notion of collective consumption goods. Of course, utopian voting and signalling schemes can be imagined. ("Scandinavian consensus," Kant's "categorical imperative," and other devices meaningful only under conditions of "symmetry," etc.) The failure of market catallactics in no way denies the following truth: given sufficient knowledge the optimal decisions can always be found by scanning over all the attainable states of the world and selecting the one which according to the postulated ethical welfare function is best. The solution "exists"; the problem is how to "find" it."

—Paul Samuelson, The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure, 1954

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

... that Pierre Schlumberger ran the family business, was a "visionary" art collector, and hosted guests including Audrey Hepburn, Yves Saint Laurent, Andy Warhol, and Rudolf Nureyev?
... that a business-firm party is a political party created and run by one person to further their own interests?
... that despite not being an economist, Sunarjo Kolopaking became dean for the faculty of economics at the University of Indonesia?
... that 19th-century French economist Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil is considered to be the founder of classical economics and economic liberalism in Chile?
... that along with her business partners, philanthropist Sara Braun, one of the first businesswomen in Punta Arenas, Chile, was involved in the genocide of the Selk'nam people?
... that American business executive William M. Ellinghaus helped rescue New York City from bankruptcy in the late 1970s?

On this day in business history

February 3:

1958 - Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community.

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General images

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

Image 1Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 21/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288. (from Corporation)
Image 3Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist, social entrepreneur and youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 4In 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 5Chart 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 6Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 7Replica of an East Indiaman of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) (from Corporation)
Image 8Emil Jellinek-Mercedes (1853–1918), here at the steering wheel of his Phoenix Double-Phaeton, was a European entrepreneur who helped design the first modern car (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 9Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
Image 10A Hollister Co. store in Leeds, England; the clothing retailing is a prominent sales market (from Sales)
Image 11A vegetable seller in a rural Sri Lankan village (from Sales)
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 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)
Image 14Time required to start a business in 2017 (from Business)
Image 15A beach salesman showing necklaces to a tourist in Mexico (from Sales)
Image 16A bond issued by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), dating from 1623, for the amount of 2,400 florins (from Corporation)
Image 17Apple co-founder and longtime leader Steve Jobs (pictured in 2010) led the introduction of many innovations in the computer, smartphone and digital music industries (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 18McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world. (from Corporation)
Image 19Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
Image 2017th-century Walloon-Dutch-Swedish businessman Louis De Geer (1587–1652) was a pioneering entrepreneur and industrialist at the dawn of modern capitalism. (from Entrepreneurship)

More did you know

...that in the United States of America the largest reserve requirement for commercial banks is 10% of liabilities?

...that the United States Federal Reserve System uses six monetary aggregates as components of the money supply?

...that an open market operation is an activity by a central bank to buy or sell government bonds on the open market?

...that, although nominal USA national debt has been steadily increasing since 1940, Debt-to-GDP ratio was actually higher during WWII than it is now?

... that the United States debt ceiling has been steadily raised since 1981?

... the Federal Reserve owns the largest share of the USA national debt?

...the term petrodollars was coined by Ibrahim Oweiss to describe dollars that did not circulate inside the United States, and therefore were not part of the normal money supply, and instead were received by petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) in exchange for oil?

More did you know facts