In economics, the business sector or corporate sector - sometimes popularly called simply "business" - is "the part of the economy made up by companies".[1][need quotation to verify][2] It is a subset of the domesticeconomy,[3] excluding the economic activities of general government, private households, and non-profit organizations serving individuals.[4] The business sector is part of the private sector, but it differs in that the private sector includes all non-government activity, including non-profit organizations, while the business sector only includes business that operate for profit.
The Oxford English Dictionary records the phrase "business sector" in the general sense from 1934.[8]
Word usage suggests that the concept of a "business sector" came into wider use after 1940.[9]
Related terms in previous times included "merchant class" and "merchant caste".
^Longman Business English Dictionary. Such a definition might include State-owned enterprises - compare:
Freeman, John R. (1989). Democracy and Markets: The Politics of Mixed Economies. Cornell studies in political economy, ISSN 2472-1433. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 117. ISBN9780801496011. Retrieved 12 June 2019. In addition, party activists recognize the instrumental value of state-owned enterprise, and in some instances they are directly involved in supervising the operation of the state business sector.
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But compare Keese, Mark; Salou, Gérard; Richardson, Pete (1991). The measurement of output and factors of production for the business sector in OECD countries: the OECD business sector database. OECD Department of Economics and Statistics working papers. Vol. 95–101. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. p. i. Retrieved 2015-06-07. [...] recent work of the OECD Economics and Statistics Department to construct an international Business Sector Data Base (BSDB) for use in a wide variety of analyses of production and supply issues [...].
^ ab"BLS Information". Glossary. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Division of Information Services. February 28, 2008. Retrieved 2009-05-05.
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"1: Overview: Opportunities and challenges for Myanmar". OECD Development Pathways Multi-dimensional Review of Myanmar. Vol. 3: From Analysis to Action. Paris: OECD Publishing (published 2016). 23 June 2016. p. 29. ISBN9789264256545. Retrieved 2017-12-27. The countries that have general government revenue more than 60% of GDP are Kiribati, Kuwait, Lesotho, Micronesia and Tuvalu. Source: IMF (2015), World Economic Outlook (database), International Monetary Fund.
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Dieterle, David A., ed. (27 March 2017). Economics: The Definitive Encyclopedia from Theory to Practice. ABC-CLIO (published 2017). pp. 297–298. ISBN9780313397080. Retrieved 19 October 2021. Modern state capitalism involves businesses that are owned or backed by the government with the behavior of a private-sector multi-national company. Today's modern state business develops into a full-fledged business model [...] Regardless of the business sector that the state-powned business is operating, if the government backing the business is not stable, the likelihood of a stable business greatly lessens.