Pareto’s Contributions to the Science of Public Finance

Summary

1. — Pareto’s harsh judgements on the science of public finance — 2. — Causes for the hostility he attracted on himself — 3. — Need to excuse his verbal excesses — 4. — The three main groups of his contributions to the science of public finance — 5. — 6. — A) The first group including three separate fragments. ‘Pareto’s law’ of income distribution and its financial applications — 7. — Pareto’s critical comment on Martello’s ‘progressive tax’ — 8. — 9. — The Ricardian theorem on public debt — 10. — B) The second group including the treatment of methodological problems. The study of the science of public finance and of social sciences in general — 11. — Logico-experimental sciences, precepts and judgements — 12. — Elliptical propositions and the possibility of translating them into theoretical principles. The reasons why their translation is very difficult and arbitrary, rather than easy, as many claim — 13. — Relationships between such notions and Pareto’s methodological analyses — 14. — That which is and that which should be in the typical example of Ferrara’s thought — 15. — Ferrara, Pareto, logico-experimental and non-logico-experimental science — 16. — The concept of a logico-experimental social science and the difficulties in constructing it — 17. — Separation of logico-experimental science from moral science — 18. — Possibility of carrying out such a separation — 19. — Possibility of creating some other social sciences — 20. — The concept of non-logical actions. The incomprehensible difficulty in understanding it — 21. — The acknowledgment of the existence of non-logical actions and the theory of their uniformities — 22. — C) The third group of fragments of Paretian thought — 23. — The concept of public need in Pareto’s critique — 24. — Subsequent objections and logico-experimental research — 25. — The Paretian concept of maximum of utility for and of the community — 26. — The reasons for its poor diffusion. Pantaleoni’s ‘individual and collective maxima’ and their difference from Pareto’s ‘maxima’ — 27. — Nineteenth century optimism with regard to public finance, E. Sax’s typical theory and the artifices it contains — 28. — Pareto’s reaction — 29. — Coordination of the third group fragments — 30. — Summary of Pareto’s contributions considered in this article — 31. — Beyond faith.