That's ok, JK. Yes, you could say:
'Businesses try to maximise their profits.'
I'm not sure how you'd add 'economist' to that, though.
{My, your, their, our, his, her, its} are possessive determiners. These act like adjectives: 'my book', etc.
{mine, yours, theirs, ours, his, hers, its} are possessive pronouns. These act like nouns: 'Whose is that book?' 'It's mine.'
You use possessive determiners when you need to specify who owns an object. If ownership has been established, you can use other determiners:
'I opened my grammar book. The book was blue, with black letters on the cover. "This is a strange book," I thought, as I opened it. "You can't read it unless you already know what it says."
At that moment my brother came in. His grammar book was red, with yellow stripes. The two books lay side by side on the table. My book was more stylish than my brother's book; but his book had more interesting examples of modal verbs.'
I've put the determiners in bold. As you can see, once ownership has been established, other determiners can be used, till we need to distinguish again ('his grammar book was red...).
MrP
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