IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v6y1992i2p181-92.html

Retrospectives: Pareto's Law

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph Persky

Abstract

Vilfredo Pareto, using data for England, a number of Italian cities, several German states, Paris, and Peru, plotted cumulative distributions of income for these countries on double logarithmic paper. He claimed that in each case the result was a straight line with about the same slope. Thus, he asserted a law of income distribution. I discuss Pareto's discovery of this relationship; his theory of income distribution; Pareto's Law and Pareto optimality; the attack on Pareto's Law; the counterattack; and the more recent literature. For all the excesses of the Paretian camp followers, there remains the significant insight that the history of all hitherto existing society is a history of social hierarchies. There is the feel of structure behind income distributions. Something is going on here.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph Persky, 1992. "Retrospectives: Pareto's Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 181-192, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:6:y:1992:i:2:p:181-92
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.6.2.181
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.6.2.181
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henry L. Moore, 1908. "The Statistical Complement of Pure Economics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 23(1), pages 1-33.
    2. Chipman, John S., 1974. "The welfare ranking of Pareto distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 275-282, November.
    3. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1969. "Distribution of Income and Wealth among Individuals," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 382-397, July.
    4. Warren M. Persons, 1909. "The Variability in the Distribution of Wealth and Income," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 23(3), pages 416-449.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sandmo, Agnar, 2013. "The principal problem in political economy: income distribution in the history of economic thought," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 15/2013, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    2. Hatipoglu, Ozan, 2008. "Patent, Inequality and Innovation-Driven Growth," MPRA Paper 7855, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Canavire-Bacarreza, Gustavo & Martínez-Vázquez, Jorge & Vulovic, Violeta, 2013. "Taxation and Economic Growth in Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 4583, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. Laurence J. Sotlikoff, 1977. "Estimating the Wealth Elasticity of Bequests From a Sample of Potential Decendents," UCLA Economics Working Papers 106, UCLA Department of Economics.
    5. Dalgaard, Carl-Johan & Erickson, Lennart, 2009. "Reasonable Expectations and the First Millennium Development Goal: How Much Can Aid Achieve?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 1170-1181, July.
    6. George Irvin, 2007. "Inequality and the Anglo-American Economic Model," ICER Working Papers 26-2007, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    7. Francesco Bogliacino & Pietro Ortoleva, 2014. "The Behavior of Others as a Reference Point," Working Papers 2014-4, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    8. Per Krusell & Anthony Smith & Joachim Hubmer, 2015. "The historical evolution of the wealth distribution: A quantitative-theoretic investigation," 2015 Meeting Papers 1406, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Bourguignon, Francois, 2005. "The Effect of Economic Growth on Social Structures," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 27, pages 1701-1747, Elsevier.
    10. Shinhye Chang & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2018. "Causality Between Per Capita Real GDP and Income Inequality in the U.S.: Evidence from a Wavelet Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 269-289, January.
    11. A. B. Atkinson, 2017. "Pareto and the Upper Tail of the Income Distribution in the UK: 1799 to the Present," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(334), pages 129-156, April.
    12. Ricardo Fort, 2007. "Land inequality and economic growth: a dynamic panel data approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 37(2‐3), pages 159-165, September.
    13. J.A. Swanson, 1975. "Urban Concentration and Structural Change: The American Middle West, 1850-1930," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 12(3), pages 309-314, October.
    14. Satya R. Chakravarty, 2009. "Equity and efficiency as components of a social welfare function," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(2), pages 181-199, June.
    15. Hongyi Li & Danyang Xie & Heng‐Fu Zou, 2000. "Dynamics of income distribution," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(4), pages 937-961, November.
    16. Schlicht, Ekkehart, 1990. "Rationality, Bounded or Not, and Institutional Analysis," Munich Reprints in Economics 3167, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    17. Dan Cao & Wenlan Luo, 2017. "Persistent Heterogeneous Returns and Top End Wealth Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 301-326, October.
    18. Rishabh Kumar, 2015. "Wealth accumulation and aggregate demand stagnation in a two class economy with applications to the United States," Working Papers 1526, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    19. Flávia Chein & Cristine Pinto, 2018. "Credit constraint and human capital investment: an empirical analysis using Brazilian household budget survey," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(21), pages 2369-2385, May.
    20. Fiaschi, Davide & Marsili, Matteo, 2012. "Distribution of wealth and incomplete markets: Theory and empirical evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 243-267.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • B31 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals - - - Individuals

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:6:y:1992:i:2:p:181-92. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.