Speaker
Description
This presentation explores Vilfredo Pareto's relationship with Adam Smith and how the former engaged with, criticized, and built upon Smith’s ideas in his own economic theories. In Mosca (2018) I aimed to demonstrate the Italian marginalists’ desire to be seen as continuing the classical tradition, with their stated theoretical goal being to translate the classical theories into more rigorous terms to strengthen their foundations. In particular, I analyzed their conception of dynamic competition. McLure (2022) concentrated on Pareto and his interpretation of classical political economy, particularly in relation to the concepts of “surplus, value and the cost of production”. In this presentation, I focus exclusively on Pareto’s references to Adam Smith. The topics addressed by Pareto and analyzed in this presentation include: Adam Smith as the founder of economic liberalism, the initiator of the scientific approach to economics, and the starting point of a progressive evolution of the discipline. At the same time, I show that Pareto criticized Smith’s labor theory of value, as well as some of his statements on applied economics, while contextualizing them within Adam Smith’s historical period.
