One of the major decisions that you have to make as a business owner is decide where you are going to incorporate your venture. If you want to find a convenient location with tax advantages.

Start-ups are the single most important factor driving a state's economic success, according to a new study by the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy. The study, which was released Monday and examined U.S. Census data on small-business start-ups by state between 1988 and 2002, found their success or failure rates had a profound impact on gross state product, state personal income levels, and total state employment.

How much is your business worth? It seems like a simple enough question to answer. Not off the top of your head, of course. But it ought not rank up there with life's great imponderables. After all, there are armies of experts--CPAs, ASAs (accredited senior appraisers), AVAs (accredited valuation analysts)--whose job it is to boil your capital assets, your contracts, your intellectual property, and everything else down to a simple bottom line.

With all the woes in the subprime market and considering the reports that some money market funds hold money in securities that include subprime debt, should I be worried that my money market fund may "break the buck"? - Keith Lobel, Columbia, S.C. The news wires have certainly been abuzz lately with reports of securities linked to subprime mortgages turning up in money market funds.

Cult stock Research In Motion has so far lived up to its dot-com hype, but economic turmoil could slow the Blackberry maker's surging business. Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC ) analyst Andrew J. Neff said that economic trends could throttle Research in Motion (nasdaq: RIMM )'s sales.

If the U.S. housing bust triggers a recession, you can still profit in the financial markets. Investment advisers tell their clients to buy bonds when the stock market is in a prolonged tailspin. But investing in under-valued property can be a great strategy.

Investment banking pre-tax profits could plummet almost three-quarters in the second half of the year on the back of market volatility sparked by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, according to stress tests conducted by rating agency Standard & Poor’s. S&P analyzed the prospects for investment banking and trading revenues by comparing banks’ performance in the second half of 1998 in the wake of the Russian debt crisis.

Hedge fund managers will face a new restriction when the Security and Exchange Commission’s anti-fraud rule goes into effect on September 10, against a backdrop of spectacular failures in the $1.5 trillion (€1.1 trillion) industry. The five SEC commissioners in July voted unanimously to adopt a new rule clarifying hedge fund fraud.

The New York Stock Exchange has proposed changing the way it allocates its $105m (€73m) payments to specialist firms so that they are performance-based, as increasing volumes are traded electronically. In a presentation to analysts last month, Duncan Niederauer, president, co-chief operating officer and head of US cash markets at NYSE Euronext, said the exchange pays an average of $9m a month to the specialist firms.

Corporate venture capitalists' investment in the first half of 2007 hit a six-year high, reflecting an effort by companies to cushion themselves against the credit crunch with long-term contributions and providing further evidence of a post dot-com resurgence of technology funding.

European merger and acquisitions activity endured its biggest summer slump last month, raising concerns that deals are drying up as a result of the global credit crisis. The value of European M&A deals announced for August fell 69% from the previous month to $62bn (€45bn).

A new US law will make acquisitions of American companies by foreign buyers more difficult and time consuming, according to lawyers. The Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007, which was signed by President George W Bush during the summer and will come into effect next month.

Home prices have shown few signs of any turnaround, and a new report sees the downward slide continuing. On Tuesday, Standard and Poor's said its nationwide S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index fell 3.2 percent in the second quarter, compared with a year ago. For the three months ended June 30, prices dropped 0.9 percent from the first quarter.

American consumers are defaulting on their credit cards at a sharply higher rate compared to last year, in what could be another consequence of the recent subprime mortgage market crisis, according to a report published Tuesday. With this trend in such an upswing we should see lots of government activity to try and temper this effect.

Household income crept higher and the poverty rate edged lower last year, the government has reported, while the number of Americans without health insurance rose by 2.2 million to 47 million people. Median household income rose 0.7 percent to $48,200, adjusted for inflation, the Census Bureau reported.