La ri?essione epistemologica della Scuola di Torino: Pasquale Jannaccone critico di Pareto (The methodological stance of the Turinese school: Pasquale Jannaccone as a critical reader of Pareto)

Pasquale Jannaccone’s critical assessment of Pareto’s economics is an interesting feature of Pareto’s initial reception in Italy, partly because it is more important, in a strictly scholarly sense, than the reception by Pareto’s supporters. In this paper it is determined that Jannaccone was a prompt and astute reader of Pareto’s Cours d’économie politique and Manuale di economia politica. Of the Cours he appreciated Pareto’s complex methodology, except the importance of pluralism, and of the Manuale he appreciated the mechanistic development, although he criticised the lack of non-mechanistic complements. The important underlying themes of Jannaccone’s assessment are that mathematical economics is but one of the many ways of representing the economic phenomenon, and that, from a methodological perspective, mathematical economics is not worth of any particular mention. Nevertheless, it is evident that Pareto’s economics still had an important in?uence on Jannaccone’s writings. In particular, some of Pareto’s arguments on welfare economics are used in Jannaccone’s critique of Cabiati’s theory of dumping and Jannaccone’s own Manuale di economia politica utilises a number of Paretian ideas, although sometimes critically. However, he did not make use of Pareto’s law of income distribution, which he regarded as doubtful. More generally, Jannaccone was critical of the lack of rigour in Pareto’s use of mathematical statistics.