Business is the backbone of American society and is one of the keys to making our system work as well as it has for more than two hundred years. Yet as a body of knowledge, business is much younger. There has been, to this point, no organized work that has attempted to present the discipline of business in a single place. The major purpose of the Encyclopedia of Business and Finance is to summarize the body of knowledge that we know as business in a single place and in language accessible to the layperson. This two-volume collection of more than three hundred entries presents a wealth of information about the major functional areas of business: accounting, economics, finance, information systems, law, management, and marketing. The articles vary in length and in depth, in bibliographic support, and in writing style. Thus, the reader will encounter a variety of approaches and discern a number of perspectives about business. Some articles are quantitative, since some aspects of business are numerically based. Other articles tend more toward the qualitative, to accommodate the more descriptive aspects of business. Some of the articles present a historical perspective, incorporating long-proven knowledge, while others focus more on current concepts and newer data. All entries have the same goal: to provide useful knowledge about the business and financial world. Because of their importance, we have given special treatment to two topics: careers and ethics. In each case, a lead entry is followed by an article about that topic in each of the functional areas of business. Thus, there are articles about careers in accounting, economics, finance, information systems, law, management, and marketing, as well as a similar series of articles for ethics. There is also a strong emphasis on organizations in the field of business and government. Wherever an organization is discussed, the article provides a Web site for further information. Relevant federal legislation is also featured in this work. All acts that have had a major impact on business are included in the Encyclopedia. The entries are arranged in the usual alphabetical order, with extensive cross-referencing of three types. First, there are ?See? references, referring the reader to an entry by another name. For example, under Bait and Switch Advertising one finds the line ?See Advertising.? The second type of cross-referencing is the ?See Also? reference. At the conclusion of the article on Insurance, for example, one reads ?See Also Personal Financial Planning.? The third type of cross-referencing is the Related Articles listing. At the conclusion of most articles, there is a list of other articles that may shed more light on the topic just discussed.