The book introduced what is now known as the Pareto distribution, demonstrating that wealth concentration follows a consistent, skewed pattern across societies and time periods. His most famous observation was that approximately 80% of land in Italy was owned by about 20% of the population, but he found similar patterns elsewhere—his data on British income taxes, for instance, showed that about 30% of the population received roughly 70% of the income. The exact ratios varied, but the underlying skewed shape of the distribution held. The book has never, to the best of our knowledge, been fully translated into English, though its key ideas were later refined in his Manual of Political Economy (1906), which is available in English.
• Title: Cours d'économie politique
• Author: Vilfredo Pareto
• Type: Book
• Publisher: n/a
• Publication time: 1896-97
• Publication place: Italy
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