SOURCE: "Vilfredo Pareto: His Life and His Economic Theories," in The Economics of Vilfredo Pareto, Frank Cass, 1979, pp. 7-25.

In the following excerpt, Cirillo provides a biographical and historical perspective for an examination of Pareto's economic writings.

The Man

Vilfredo Pareto was born in Paris on July 15, 1848 and died at Céligny, in the Canton of Geneva, on August 19, 1923. His family belonged to the Genoese nobility which governed the Republic till it was conquered by Napoleon. His father, Marchese Raffaele Pareto, typical of the youth of the Italian Risorgimento of the first half of the nineteenth century, was involved in a Mazzinian conspiracy, and at the age of twenty-four as a result was forced to leave Italy and live in Paris. Here he took ajob as a civil engineer and married Marie Metenier who bore him two daughters and one son, Vilfredo. One of the daughters, Cristina, died...