PARETO (Vilfredo).
Manual of Political Economy.
The first English translation of Pareto’s masterpiece, one of the most important contributions to economics of the twentieth century, in which his changed position regarding economic theory and politics is most completely stated. The Manual ‘is better conceived and, more important, much better thought through than the Cours d’Economie Politique (1896-7). It is basically a work of synthesis in which Pareto presented a general theory of economic equilibrium which is considerably more refined than Walras’s’ (IESS).
The Manual was originally published in Italian in 1906 as part of the book series Piccola biblioteca scientifica. The text was later revised and translated intro French in 1909, upon which the present English translation is based - a decision that drew criticism from William Jaffé and Vincent J. Tarascio in separate articles published in the Journal of Economic Literature, with Tarascio commenting: ‘The recent English translation is a translation from the French edition. Therefore it is a translation of a poor translation of the original Italian.’