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EH.NET BOOK REVIEW 
 
 
Published by EH.NET  (February 1998) 
 
 
Mario Baldassarri, editor, _Maffeo Pantaleoni: At the Origin of the 
Italian School of Economics and Finance_.  New York: St. Martin's 
Press and London: Macmillan Press (in Association with _Rivista 
di Politica Economica_, Sipi, Roma), 1997.  v + 209 pp. 
$79.95 (cloth), ISBN: 031217358X. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by Luigino Bruni,  School of Economic and 
Social Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK). 
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Maffeo Pantaleoni (1857-1924) is one the most original and 
complex figures in the history of Italian economics. One of the 
founders of pure economics, his _Principii di Economia pura_ 
(Barbera, 1889) [English Translation _Pure Economics_ (Macmillan, 
1898)] introduced Vilfredo Pareto to the "new economics," and 
brought marginalism to Italy. 
 
"We do not know," wrote Irving Fisher reviewing _Pure Economics_ 
in 1898, "where else in English can be found so compact and 
excellent an epitome of modern economic theory". The _Principii 
di Economia pura_ was Pantaleoni's "gem" (Edgeworth), a book 
characterised by the hedonist hypothesis on which economic 
science is based, and from which every theorem has been derived. 
In Pantaleoni's system, hedonism was linked to Spencerian 
evolutionary philosophy (it  functions to conserve the 
organism), and gave a strong normative connotation to economic 
theory. For him, economics should provide a criterion to 
distinguish economic (rational) from non-economic (irrational) 
behavior. 
 
In his obituary for Pareto, published in the _Giornale degli 
economisti_ (1924), Pantaleoni restated his argument that 
psychological hedonism is more scientific than other hypotheses 
upon which choice theory can be based (including Pareto's theory 
of choice). His reasons were that: a) the history of economics, 
from Bentham to Jevons and Edgeworth has shown the efficacy of 
the hedonistic economics; b) the approach is based on the 
observation of concrete reality, on psychological and biological 
studies; c) and since people reveal their preferences, economists 
can know much more about mankind's behavior than natural 
scientists. Spencer, Sidgwick, Marshall, Edgeworth, but also 
Beccaria, Verri, and Ferrara in the Italian tradition, were the 
sources of his original and still relevant vision of economics 
(in the contemporary debate over rational choice, Kahneman, 
Tversky, Sugden and the cognitivist movement would find 
Pantaleoni a good ally). 
 
However, the "pure economics" season of Pantaleoni's career did 
not last long. Near the end of the last century he started 
analysing "impure economics"; the relations between economics and 
statistics, history, and institutions. These issues occupied his 
attention for the remainder of his career. 
 
Is it possible to form a coherent interpretation of Pantaleoni 
from the _Principii_ to _Erotemi_ (the title of the volumes 
collecting his papers)? This question, linked to the significance 
and originality of Pantaleoni's work, arose soon after his death. 
The International Congress  "Maffeo Pantaleoni. Dal  Paese' al 
Villaggio Globale", held in Macerata, Italy in December 1994, 
tried to take the question seriously, examining a variety of 
answers. Now the proceedings of the congress have become a book, 
edited by Mario Baldassarri, with contributions by congress 
attendees Piero Bini, Italo Magnani, Nicolo Bellanca, Luis 
Chauvel and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Pierluigi Ciocca, Marcello de 
Cecco and Paolo Sylos Labini. The book is a welcome initiative 
that can contribute to our knowledge of an economist largely 
forgotten (unfairly) in contemporary international economic 
debates (and also often overlooked in the history of economic 
thought). 
 
Paolo Sylos Labini provides the argument for the position that 
"there are at least two Pantaleoni." The first is the author of 
the _Principii_; the other authored the _Erotemi_. He focuses on 
the analysis of the economic dynamics of the "second Pantaleoni." 
On the other side of the issue, Piero Bini, Nicolo Bellanca and 
Italo Magnani attempt an unitarian interpretation of the thought 
of Pantaleoni. 
 
Searching for the originality of Pantaleoni's work, Bini argues 
that it must be somewhere other than in his marginalist framework 
because, as B"hm Bawerk, Pareto, Gide, and Schumpeter have 
pointed out, "the marginalist framework of the work cannot be 
considered original" (p. 15). Bini argues that Pantaleoni's 
originality lies in his attempt to overcome marginalism by 
including elements of historical and sociological investigation 
as well as applied economics, into economic analysis. A 
Pantaleoni closer to Marshall than to Pareto. Where does Bini 
find the thread which links together the whole Pantaleonian work? 
It is in the hedonistic approach, the pillar of the _Principii_, 
which according to Bini is the central hermeneutic category of 
Pantaleoni's reflections on economics and society from the first 
essays to his obituary of Pareto, published near the time of his 
death. This is the same common thread spotted by Italo Magnani, 
in his interesting paper dedicated to marginalism and role of the 
state in Pantaleoni's work. 
 
Bellanca's interpretation of Pantaleoni, the most original and 
ambitious paper of the book, is built upon two ideal type 
categories. The first is Panteleoni's attempt to place side by 
side the "perfection" of marginalist theory and the "imperfection" 
of its starting points, or of power relations. Only by keeping 
together the two sides of analysis it is possible, in 
Pantaleoni's view, to understand the complexity of the economic 
phenomenon. The second category is dynamic analysis, which proved 
to be the most important and original aspect of Pantaleoni's latter 
work. Pareto in his first works tried to extend his analysis of 
equilibrium from static to dynamics, by means of the analogy with 
mechanics (D'Alambert's principle). However Pareto himself found 
out that this approach to dynamics did not work, and, after 1901, 
he gave up the attempt to dynamize his economic system, devoting 
himself instead to sociological study. Pantaleoni, who knew well 
the intellectual evolution of his genial friend, tried, on the 
contrary, to develop a dynamic analysis based on a non-mechanical 
(or non-physical) paradigm. His paper "Alcuni problemi di 
dinamica economica" (1909) opened the most interesting Italian 
research program between the two wars, when such economists 
as Bresciani Turroni, Demaria, Del Vecchio, Fanno, and Einaudi 
attempted to go beyond "static" Paretian equilibrium theory by 
introducing "dynamic" analysis into economics. This tradition 
still continues in the works of contemporary Italian economists 
like Pasinetti or Sylos Labini. 
 
Marcello De Cecco provides a link between Pantaleoni and 
contemporary economic research by highlighting "the importance of 
the analysis contained in [his] works for research on the 
relationship between economics and institutions" (p. 189). 
 
I would like to finish this review, in which only a few aspects 
of the importance of Pantaleoni's work have been mentioned, by 
encouraging readers to see Sraffa's obituary of Pantaleoni 
(originally published in the _Economic Journal_, 1924), which 
opens the volume and reveals another way in which Pantaleoni has 
influenced modern economics. 
 
 
Luigino Bruni,, PhD in History of economic thought from 
the Univeristy of Firenze (Italy), is visiting fellow in economics at the 
school of Economic and Social Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich 
(UK). His doctoral thesis was on Pareto's theory of choice. 
 
 
 
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