La notion de loi dans l'oeuvre de Pareto

Alain Beraud

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Abstract: By studying statistical data, Pareto showed that the parameters which characterize the distribution of income are stable. He had so put in evidence an empirical law. The importance which he granted to this result translates methodological conceptions very remote from those that Walras defended and we are, then, worn to think that Pareto takes back simply the methodological principles which Mill and Jevons had developed. This idea must be qualified. In his first works, Pareto appears as a heir of Mill, but, from 1897, he evolves towards a methodology which he considers as experimental. He pushes aside, in particular, the arguments upon which Mill called when he supported that the political economy is essentially an abstract science which leans on reasoning a priori. The method in the political economy is that of any science. The only criterion of the truth is the correspondence of the results of the reasoning with the data of the empirical observation.

Keywords: Pareto; John Stuart Mill; Jevons; loi; répartition des revenus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-11
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00004741
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Published in Œconomia - History/Methodology/Philosophy, 2007, PE, n°39, pp.1695-1017

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