Vilfredo Pareto

Vilfredo Pareto , 1848-1923, Italian economist and sociologist, b. Paris, of an exiled noble family that returned to Italy in 1858. He studied mathematics and engineering in Turin and worked as an engineer for many years, meanwhile becoming increasingly interested in social and economic problems. His economic writings won him (1893) a professorship of political economy at the Univ. of Lausanne. His notable contribution in applying mathematics to economic theory is found especially in Cours d'économie politique (1896-97). In his sociological studies he sought to differentiate the rational and nonrational factors in social action. He used that concept as the basis for his theory of the cyclical development and fall of governing elite groups. One of the originators of welfare economics, he defined total welfare as an improvement in a person's condition that was not achieved at any other person's expense. His chief work in sociology, Trattato di sociologia generale (1916), has been translated as Mind and Society (4 vol., 1935).

Bibliography: See G. C. Homans and C. P. Curtis, Jr., An Introduction to Pareto: His Sociology (1934, repr. 1970); study by F. Borkenau (1936); J. H. Meisel, ed., Pareto and Mosca (1965); R. Cirillo, The Economics of Vilfredo Pareto (1979); J. Freund, Pareto (tr. 1988).

Pareto, Vilfredo (1848–1923) An Italian economist and sociologist, subject of an extensive treatment in Talcott Parsons's The Structure of Social Action (1937) as a co-founder of the ‘voluntaristic theory of action’, but since largely ignored by sociologists.

Already famous for his contributions to equilibrium theory as a mathematical economist, in his later years Pareto turned his hand to sociology, and in 1916 published his magnum opus the Trattato di sociologia generale (translated in four volumes as The Mind and Society in 1935). Although some read it as a proto-fascist work, the publication of the Trattato confirmed Pareto's fame in his own lifetime, although little of this reputation has survived into the present. Pareto is probably best known today for being the first person to use the term ‘élite’ to refer to the few who rule the many. He also exerted an early influence on the development of social systems theory. Samuel E. Finer's Vilfredo Pareto, Sociological Writings (1966) contains a useful selection of his most important sociological texts, together with a substantial introductory essay by Finer himself. See also ÉLITE THEORY; PARETO PRINCIPLE.