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Vilfredo Pareto: Economists
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In the late 1800s, Vilfredo Pareto, an economist, established that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. This was the first instantiation of a socio-economic law that soon appeared to have universal scope.
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During these years Pareto acquired a deep interest in the political life of his country and expressed his views on a variety of topics in lectures, in articles for various journals, and in direct political activity. Steadfast in his support of free enterprise economic theory and free trade, he never ceased arguing that these concepts were vital necessities for the development of Italy. Vociferous and polemical in his advocacy of these ideas, and sharp in his denunciation of his opponents (who happened to be in power in Italy at that time), his public lectures were sufficiently controversial that they were sometimes raided and closed down by the police, and occasionally brought threats of violence from hired thugs. Making little headway with his economic concepts at the time, Pareto retired from active political life and was appointed Professor of Political Economy at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1893. There he established his reputation as an economist and sociologist. So substantial did this reputation eventually become that he has been dubbed "the Karl Marx of the Bourgeoisie" by his Marxist opponents.
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Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto [vil'fre:do pa're:to] (July 15, 1848, Paris – August 19, 1923, Geneva) was a French-Italian sociologist, economist and philosopher. He made several important contributions especially in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices. He introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics.
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Doubtlessly, there were many people in Italy who were glad to see Pareto safely hidden away in Switzerland. But from his new academic perch, Pareto's nerve only increased. His attacks on the Italian government continued in his monthly column to the Giornale degli economisti and in foreign journals. He assisted and even housed many socialists and radicals that had been chased out of Italy (particularly after the 1898 May riots). When the Dreyfus affair broke in France, Pareto put his poison to work against the anti-Semitic authorities.
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Pareto wird öfter als dem italienischen Faschismus zugeneigt angesehen. Dies hängt mit einer Würdigung Paretos durch den italienischen Ökonomen und überzeugten Faschisten Amoroso im Journale d’economisti zusammen, welcher Pareto als Faschisten bezeichnete. Daher gilt Pareto bis heute teilweise als wichtiger Vorläufer des Fascismo. Benito Mussolini sah in ihm einen hervorragenden Lehrmeister. Dies ist jedoch umstritten; so stand z. B. Max Weber einer caesarischen Ausformung der Demokratie, allerdings mit einem starken Parlament, deutlich offener gegenüber (Max Weber starb aber bereits 1920).
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Under certain idealised conditions, it can be shown that a system of free markets will lead to a Pareto efficient outcome. This was first demonstrated mathematically by economists Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu. This is called the first welfare theorem. However, the result likely does not reflect the workings of real economies because of the restrictive assumptions necessary for the proof (markets exist for all possible goods, markets are perfectly competitive, transaction costs are negligible, and there must be no externalities).
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