Portal:Business

The Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) of ancient China experienced contrasting periods of economic prosperity and decline. It is normally divided into three periods: Western Han (206 BC – 9 AD), the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD), and Eastern Han (25–220 AD). The Xin regime, established by the former regent Wang Mang, formed a brief interregnum between lengthy periods of Han rule. Following the fall of Wang Mang, the Han capital was moved eastward from Chang'an to Luoyang. In consequence, historians have named the succeeding eras Western Han and Eastern Han respectively.

Copenhagen

The economy of Denmark is a modern mixed economy with comfortable living standards, a high level of government services and transfers, and a high dependence on foreign trade. The economy is dominated by the service sector with 80% of all jobs, whereas about 11% of all employees work in manufacturing and 2% in agriculture. The nominal gross national income per capita was the seventh-highest in the world at $58,439 in 2020. Correcting for purchasing power, per capita income was Int$57,781 or 10th-highest globally. The income distribution is relatively equal but inequality has somewhat increased during the last decades. This increase was attributed to both a larger spread in gross incomes and various economic policy measures. In 2017, Denmark had the seventh-lowest Gini coefficient (a measure of economic inequality) of the then 28 European Union countries. With 5,932,654 inhabitants (1 January 2023), Denmark has the 36th largest national economy in the world measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), and the 51st largest in the world measured by purchasing power parity (PPP).

Denmark has a very long tradition of adhering to a fixed exchange-rate system and still does so today. It is unique among OECD countries to do so while maintaining an independent currency: The Danish krone, which is pegged to the euro. Though eligible to join the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU), the Danish voters in a referendum in 2000 rejected exchanging the krone for the euro. Whereas Denmark's neighbours like Norway, Sweden, Poland and the United Kingdom generally follow inflation targeting in their monetary policy, the priority of Denmark's central bank is to maintain exchange rate stability. Consequently, the central bank has no role in a domestic stabilization policy. Since February 2015, the central bank has maintained a negative interest rate to contain an upward exchange rate pressure. (Full article...)

"Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than on a mathematical expectation, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits -- of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities. Enterprise only pretends to itself to be mainly actuated by the statements in its own prospectus, however candid and sincere. Only a little more than an expedition to the South Pole, is it based on an exact calculation of benefits to come. Thus if the animal spirits are dimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend on nothing but a mathematical expectation, enterprise will fade and die; -- though fears of loss may have a basis no more reasonable than hopes of profit had before.

It is safe to say that enterprise which depends on hopes stretching into the future benefits the community as a whole. But individual initiative will only be adequate when reasonable calculation is supplemented and supported by animal spirits, so that the thought of ultimate loss which often overtakes pioneers, as experience undoubtedly tells us and them, is put aside as a healthy man puts aside the expectation of death.

This means, unfortunately, not only that slumps and depressions are exaggerated in degree, but that economic prosperity is excessively dependent on a political and social atmosphere which is congenial to the average business man. If the fear of a Labour Government or a New Deal depresses enterprise, this need not be the result either of a reasonable calculation or of a plot with political intent; -- it is the mere consequence of upsetting the delicate balance of spontaneous optimism. In estimating the prospects of investment, we must have regard, therefore, to the nerves and hysteria and even the digestions and reactions to the weather of those upon whose spontaneous activity it largely depends."

—John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936

• ... that Garretson, South Dakota, was named after businessman Arthur Samuel Garretson?
• ... that upon its completion, 400 Madison Avenue in New York City was described as one of several buildings that comprised the "Grand Canyon of midtown business"?
• ... that after Lew Dickey Sr. broke into the radio business by buying a station in West Virginia, his son would go on to own Cumulus Media?
• ... that the New York Produce Exchange's business was described in 1886 as "callithumpian discord" with "fiendish screeches"?
• ... that one of Beverly Robertson's biggest accomplishments as CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber was attracting the Ford Motor Company's US$5.6 billion Blue Oval City complex to Memphis, Tennessee?
• ... 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?

March 26:

• 1973 - Larry Page, an American computer scientist, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Google Inc., was born on this day.

• ...that Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman of Biocon, is India's richest woman?

• ...advertising management is a function of marketing starting from market research, continuing through advertising, leading to actual sales or achievement of objectives?

• ... that a value-added service (VAS) is a telecommunications industry term for non-core services or, in short, all services beyond standard voice calls?

• ...that EID Parry is one of the oldest business entities in the Indian subcontinent and owes its origin to Thomas Parry, a Welshman who came to India in late 1780s?

• ... that an agrarian society is one that is based on agriculture as its prime means for support and sustenance?

• ... that the expression Hindu rate of growth is used to refer to the low annual growth rate of the economy of India, which stagnated around 3.5% from 1950 to 1980?

• ...that Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Daron Acemoğlu received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal for his work on Skill Acquisition and Technological Change, Investment and Growth, Directed Search and Unemployment, The Role of Institutions in Economic Development and Political Economy?