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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 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, ˌkə-/) 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 within economies, 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 economies as systems 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. It also seeks to analyse and describe the global economy. (Full article...)

Selected article

AIG New York headquarters at dusk

American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American multinational finance and insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. As of 2023, AIG employed 25,200 people. The company operates through three core businesses: general insurance, life & retirement, and a standalone technology-enabled subsidiary. General Insurance includes Commercial, Personal Insurance, U.S. and International field operations. Life & Retirement includes Group Retirement, Individual Retirement, Life, and Institutional Markets. AIG is the title sponsor of the AIG Women's Open golf tournament. In 2023, for the sixth consecutive year, DiversityInc named AIG among the Top 50 Companies for Diversity list.

AIG's corporate headquarters are in New York City and the company also has offices around the world. AIG serves 87% of the Fortune Global 500 and 83% of the Forbes 2000. AIG was ranked 60th on the 2018 Fortune 500 list. According to the 2016 Forbes Global 2000 list, AIG is the 87th largest public company in the world. On December 31, 2017, AIG had $65.2 billion (~$79.7 billion in 2023) in shareholder equity.

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Great Fish Market by Jan Brueghel the Elder.
Photo credit: Genghiskhanviet

A fish market is a marketplace used for marketing fish products. It can be dedicated to wholesale trade between fishermen and fish merchants, or to the sale of seafood to individual consumers, or to both. Retail fish markets, a type of wet market, often sell street food as well.

Fish markets range in size from small fish stalls to the great Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, turning over about 660,000 tonnes a year.

Selected economy

Skyline of Singapore's Downtown Core

The economy of Singapore is a highly developed mixed market economy with dirigiste characteristics. Singapore's economy has been consistently ranked as the most open in the world, the joint 4th-least corrupt, and the most pro-business. Singapore has low tax-rates and the second highest per-capita GDP in the world in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is headquartered in Singapore.

Alongside the business-friendly reputation for global and local privately held companies and public companies, various national state-owned enterprises play a substantial role in Singapore's economy. The sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings holds majority stakes in several of the nation's largest bellwether companies, such as Singapore Airlines, Singtel, ST Engineering and Mediacorp. With regards to foreign direct investment (FDI), the Singaporean economy is a major FDI outflow-financier in the world. In addition, throughout its history, Singapore has benefited from the large inward flows of FDI from global investors, financial institutions and multinational corporations (MNCs) due to its highly attractive investment climate along with a stable and conducive political environment throughout its modern years. (Full article...)

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"In all of the fields where individual products have even the slightest element of uniqueness, competition bears but faint resemblance to the pure competition of a highly organized market for a homogeneous product. Consider, for instance, the competitive analysis as applied to the automobile industry. How is one to conceive of demand and supply curves for "automobiles in general" when, owing to variations in quality, design, and type, the prices of individual units range from several hundred to many thousand of dollars? How define the number of units which would be taken from or put upon the market at any particular price? How fit into the analysis a wide variety of costs based mostly upon a correspondingly wide variety of product? These difficulties are great; perhaps they are not insurmountable. The real one is neither of definition nor of interpretation, and cannot be surmounted. Competitive theory does not fit because competition between through the group is only partial and is highly uneven. The competition between sport roadsters and ten-ton trucks must be virtually zero; and there is probably more justification for drawing up a joint demand schedule for Fords and house room than for Fords and Locomobiles. These are, perhaps, extreme cases, but the fact that each producer through the group has a market at a least partially distinct from those of the others introduces forces, absent under pure competition, which materially alter the result. Prices throughout are adjusted in some measure according to the monopoly principle. Furthermore, advertising and selling outlays are invited by the fact that the market of each seller is limited, whereas the very nature of a purely competitive market precludes a selling problem. The theory of pure competition, in explaining the adjustment of economic forces in such an industry, is a complete misfit.

Because most prices involve monopoly elements, it is monopolistic competition that most people think of in connection with the simple word "competition". In fact, it may almost be said that under pure competition the buyers and sellers do not really compete in the sense in which the word is currently used. One never hears of "competition" in connection with the great markets, and the phrases "price cutting", "underselling", "unfair competition", "meeting competition", "securing a market", etc., are unknown. No wonder the principles of such a market seem so unreal when applied to the "business" world where these terms have meaning. They are based on the supposition that each seller accepts the market price and can dispose of his entire supply without materially affecting it. Thus there is no problem of choosing a price policy, no problem of adapting the product more exactly to the buyers (real or fancied) wants. The theory of pure competition could hardly be expected to fit facts so far different from its assumptions. But there is no reason why a theory of value cannot be formulated which will fit them - a theory concerning itself specifically with goods which are not homogeneous. This is the purpose of the later chapters of this book. We turn first to the theory of pure competition."

Edward Chamberlin, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, 1933

Topics


  • ... that only months after going out of business, Milkrun relaunched?
  • ... that despite little formal education, Earnest Andersson was a successful inventor, businessman, amateur athlete, race car driver, pilot, photographer, radio operator, pro golfer, and composer?
  • ... that Home Depot CEO Ted Decker ran his own landscaping business in high school?
  • ... that the British political theorist Chris Armstrong has called for a "blue new deal" to secure ecological resilience for the ocean and a just blue economy?
  • ... that American lumber businessman and politician John Barber White funded a scholarship at Williams College in memory of his son?
  • ... that food was left to rot outside after the supermarket Supie went out of business?

On this day in business history

September 22:

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

More did you know

  • ...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 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.

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