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After climbing steeply, according to research from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, small-business adoption of social media marketing has plateaued at 24%.

The crisis laid bare the limits of self-regulation, demonstrating the need for strong EU economic governance, surveillance and policy co-ordination, and also the need to involve the European Parliament more closely in decision-making, says a mid-term report approved by Parliament's Special Committee on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis (CRIS) on Wednesday. EU and national recovery plans should pay special attention to small business needs and innovative energy projects, it adds.

As developing Asia’s recovery from the global crisis gains firm hold, medium- and long-run growth will re-assert itself as the region’s top economic priority. The central challenge now facing the region is to transform its V-shaped recovery into sustained growth beyond the recovery.

Multifactor productivity – defined as output per unit of combined inputs – increased in about 40 percent of the 86 four-digit NAICS manufacturing industries in 2008, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This was down from 2007, when multifactor productivity increased in about 60 percent of those industries. Fewer manufacturing industries recorded multifactor productivity increases in 2008 than in any year since 2001.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for Australia increased 0.8 percent and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) increased 0.2 percent in July.

Due to recent higher medical claim costs, an aging population and changes brought about by health care reform, employers can expect 2011 health care cost increases to be at their highest levels in five years, according to an analysis by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting and outsourcing company. Next year, Hewitt projects an 8.8 percent average premium increase for employers, compared to 6.9 percent in 2010 and 6.0 percent in 2009.

The resurgent People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economy remains on track to grow 9.6% this year, and 9.1% in 2011, but policymakers will need to boost domestic consumption to make growth more sustainable and inclusive in the long term, says the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a major new report.

Fifty-nine percent of Americans feel “not good” or “bad” about the direction the economy is headed, up from 49% in May. And 76% don’t expect their quality of life, including their spending levels, to return to pre-recession levels until 2012 at the earliest, up from 63% who said that in May. That’s according to the findings of a survey released by AlixPartners LLP, the global business-advisory firm.

From January to August, the industrial profits of enterprises above designated size achieved 2600.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 55%. The profits of State-owned and State-holding Industrial Enterprises gained 842.3 billion yuan, up by 67.5%; that of collective-owned enterprises amounted to 47.1 billion yuan, up by 35.8%; that of Share-holding Corporation Ltd amounted to 1405.6 billion yuan, up by 53.4%; that of enterprises with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and Foreign Funded Enterprises reached 744.1 billion yuan, up by 54.5%; that of private enterprises gained 671.5 billion yuan, increased 50.9% year-on-year.

America's small business owners are considerably more upbeat about the financial performance of their businesses than they were a year ago, according to The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute. Fifty-one percent of small business owners surveyed in June of this year anticipate their 2010 revenues will exceed their 2009 sales. A year ago, only 32 percent expected better financial performance in 2009 than the prior year.