Notwithstanding our firm conviction that to really get to know an author, one needs to read him or her in the original, we nevertheless consider that this new English-language translation of Vilfredo Pareto’s Manuale-Manuel (the earlier, highly criticized one, dating back to 1971) represents an important contribution to Anglo-Saxon Pareto studies.
The translation, overseen by John Chipman with the assistance of Michael McLure, is completed by a valuable translation of the commentaries by Aldo Montesano, Alberto Zanni, and Luigino Bruni contained in the Italian edition published in 2006.
The annotations are of three types: the first drawn up separately by Chipman and Zanni, the second by Zanni, and the third by Montesano.
The first type, explanatory notes on the text, will help the reader to find his way among the kaleidoscope of references to little-known personalities and writings made by Pareto, to appreciate the variations between the two earliest editions (the Italian one of 1905 and the French one of 1909), and to gain a better understanding of numerous obscure passages.
The second category consists of authoritative, erudite, and analytical comments on topics found in the Manuale-Manuel and, more generally, in Pareto’s ideas. Noteworthy among these are, first, the underlining of the notions of marginal and non-marginal equilibrium as used by Pareto (notes 10–11, 16–17); second, the investigation of the difference between the original Edgeworth box and Pareto’s version of it (note 19); third, the discussion of the theory of oligopoly expounded in the Manuale-Manuel (notes 20–22); fourth, the distinction between efficient and parasitic competition, which was afforded great analytical and political prominence by Pareto but has hitherto been utterly neglected in Pareto studies (note 30); and last, a potent justification of Pareto’s rebuttal of the general validity of the theory of comparative advantage (notes 49–50).
Among the annotations in the second category, this edition also incorporates original research performed by McLure comparing the differing conceptions of income distribution found in Pareto and Arthur Cecil Pigou (note 58).
The third category of annotations, relating to the mathematical appendix to the Manuel (probably the best-known element of Pareto’s thinking), is presumably the part of the book that will be of greatest interest to economists. All in all, this constitutes an original interpretation of the advanced mathematics found in Pareto’s economic thinking, whose appreciation, while demanding a considerable effort of concentration on the part of the non-specialist reader, will, on the other hand, pay dividends in terms of understanding some of the more complex (and, in some cases, mistaken) formal passages of Pareto’s writing. Of particular interest in this regard we can enumerate notes 10–24, which give an insight into the ramifications of the familiar issue of the problems of determination of the indifference function based on the incorporation of a differential equation involving more than two assets; note 123, comparing the varying conceptions of free competition in Pareto and the mainstream; note 157, showing how Pareto’s theory of production corresponds to that of the mainstream only from a formalistic, and not a semantic, point of view; notes 188 and 190, containing a resumé of the history of the Paretian optimum; and notes 199–200, which explore Pareto’s position in relation to later formal developments of the theory of general economic equilibrium.
Not least among the merits of the third category of annotations is in the correction of the numerous textual misprints and oversights that have plagued Pareto and have contributed to rendering the understanding of the appendix more difficult than necessary.
