Vilfredo Pareto

Economist, Academic

1848 – 1923

28

Who was Vilfredo Pareto?

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher. He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices. He was also responsible for popularising the use of the term "elite" in social analysis.

He introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. He was also the first to discover that income follows a Pareto distribution, which is a power law probability distribution. The Pareto principle was named after him and built on observations of his such as that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He also contributed to the fields of sociology and mathematics.

His legacy as an economist was profound. Partly because of him, the field evolved from a branch of moral philosophy as practised by Adam Smith into a data intensive field of scientific research and mathematical equations.

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Born
Jul 15, 1848
Paris
Nationality
  • Italy
Profession
Education
  • HEC Lausanne
  • Polytechnic University of Turin
Lived in
  • Paris
Died
Aug 19, 1923
CĂ©ligny

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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