Earlier we asked what the solution is on how chief executives should be paid.

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Growth in Britain's construction industry advanced in December after a lacklustre November, according to The Markit/CIPS UK Construction Purchasing Managers' Index, which rose to 57.8 from 55.3. Figures above 50 mean growth.

 BBC Personal Finance Correspondent Simon Gompertz tweets:

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Have you signed up for gym membership recently? How much are you going to use it?

Probabaly not as much as you think and the companies know it, says Undercover Economist, Tim Harford.

But gyms aren't the only business that rely on our lack of willpower. You can read more, external on Mr Harford's blog.

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Earlier, we learned that a FTSE 100 chief executive will have earned, by the end of today, the same as the average worker will for all of 2016, according the High Pay Centre.

Coming to the defence of hard working chief executives is free-market think tank, the Adam Smith Institute.

ASI's Sam Bowman says "you can't say a CEO is overpaid unless you can say how much a CEO should be paid."

Does that make sense to you? Email: bizlivepage@bbc.co.uk

Ever wondered how governments distill an entire nation's economic activity into one number - GDP? Well, they don't necessarily manage it at all, according to Bloomberg, external. Researchers World Economics found factors such as corruption, old benchmarking data, the informal economy and corruption can skew growth data. 

Does war in the Middle East drive the price of oil? Or can the wealth oil brings drive peace? Analyst Torek Farhadi tells the World Service he thinks conflict in the Middle East drives the oil price - and vice versa.  

German unemployment fell by more than expected in December. Seasonally adjusted the unemployment total fell by 14,000, that's more than double the number forecast by economists.

Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING-DiBa tweets:

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Lindsay Pattison, chief executive of global media group Maxus, is on Business Live.

She says that in the UK, 50% of ad budgets will be spent on digital advertising this year, because "consumers are obsessed with their smartphones".

"A mobile first campaign is critical for clients," she says.

In the past it was all about "paid" media in the UK - a £20bn a year market.  

But now individuals can start advertising campaigns for nothing, with their own Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.

Ms Pattison says she is the only female chief executive of a global advertising firm.

"Women still need to smash through that glass ceiling," she says.

Sometimes women hold themselves back, she adds.

HSBC is having problems with its online banking service in the UK today.

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Thomas Piketty is the closest thing that economics has to a rock star.

His lengthy book, Capital in the 21st Century, argued that inequality is baked into capitalism and is likely to get worse.

Anyhow, in this article, external he discusses the implications of his findings and clarifies some of his thinking.

Tesco is the biggest gainer on the FTSE 100 today, up 4.3%. But it's really only retracing yesterday's downward steps. The supermarket is trading at 148.4 pence a share.

There's not much reaction from retail shares to those "disappointing" results from Next.

Marks & Spencer is down 0.3% and Burberry is 0.44% lower.

Brent crude is down 0.5% at $37.03 a barrel.

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Smith & Wesson expects to shift more guns, external in the three months to the end of January. Sales will probably be in the range from $175m to $180m, it says. Previously it reckoned it would sell as much as $155m of merchandise, which includes pistols, rifles and handcuffs. 

In December it reported market-beating results as gun control was back on the agenda for politicians in the US.

The FTSE 100 has opened 1% higher, winning back some of Monday's 2.6% fall.

Next shares are down 3% after its trading update.

In Tokyo the Nikkei finished 0.4% lower and the Shanghai Composite lost 0.26%.

France's Orange is in merger talks with Bouygues Telecom (pronounced 'bweeg'). 

"These discussions are not limited by any particular calendar and hold no commitment to any particular predefined outcome," Orange said in a statement.

If it goes ahead, it would be the latest in a flurry of deals in the telcoms industry.

Last year BT bought mobile operator EE for £12.5bn.

Also last year Telefonica announced the sale of its O2 mobile network.

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Tunnock's Teacakes are so Scottish, that giant dancing teacakes featured in the opening ceremony at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow (see picture).

But there's a bit of a row over the company's latest advertising campaign, which says they're a Great British teacake.

Boyd Tunnock, the managing director of Tunnocks, and grandson of the company's founder Tommy Tunnock, says nothing has changed in the packaging and it is only the advert that was changed on the London Underground.

"We thought we would try to impress the Londoners to buy more teacakes," he said.

But the real question is, is it a cake or a biscuit?

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Maureen Hinton of Verdict, who are retail analysts, is digesting Next's trading update. Next blamed mild weather for "disappointing" fourth quarter sales.

The results show a "very tough" market, especially for the bigger, traditional retailers. Smaller retailers like Jigsaw have fared better.

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Phil Dorrell, a director at Retail Remedy, says the figures from Next are "pretty positive".

He thinks that when other retailers release their Christmas sales figures, we'll be saying: "Wow, Next did really well."

He expects that Marks and Spencer will report a decline in sales for the Christmas period.

Retail analyst Neil Saunders tweets:

Image source, Next

Next is saying that warm winter weather is partly to blame for a "disappointing" fourth quarter performance. It supplied the chart above which shows the temperature (blue line) along with sales.

It says sales are running below guidance, but the firm is holding steady on its profit estimate for the year:

"Full price sales for the year to date are currently +3.7% ahead of last year, just below the bottom end of our previous guidance of +4.0% to +6.0%.  However, good control of margins, costs and stock, along with healthy clearance rates means that we expect profits for the full year to remain within our profit guidance of £810m to £845m, issued in October."