PANTALEONI, MAFFEO. - Italian economist, b. at Frascati on 2 July 1857, d. at Milan on 29 Oct. 1924, professor of political economy at the Universities of Camerino, Macerata, Venice, Bari, Naples, Geneva, Pavia, Rome; deputy and senator, he was a scientist of notable fame, for more than forty years an animator of economic studies in Italy.
His figure takes its place among those of Walras and Pareto. When he presented himself on the scientific field, the Walrasian construction was already complete, in which economic equilibrium is represented by a system of algebraic equations linking prices and quantities to one another. The Paretian architecture had not yet arisen, which was to confer upon the edifice that elegant form in which economic equilibrium is presented as the result of the contrast between tastes and obstacles (v. PARETO).
P.'s conception anticipates that of Pareto in its intent to eliminate monetary superstructures. Considering productivity as an indirect utility, he extends to the sector of production the conception that J. Jevons had already devised for the sector of consumption, and thus succeeds in determining the configuration of equilibrium under a regime of competition as that in which the ratios of the final degrees of utility, considered two by two, remain the same for all the subjects present on the market. It follows as a consequence that, as long as a disparity persists between the final degrees of utility even of only two subjects, the system is not in equilibrium. Which means that the resources of the community are not employed in the manner that is most advantageous for the community itself. If the disparity refers to direct goods, then the advantage of an operation of exchange arises; if it refers to instrumental goods, the advantage arises of a different combination of the factors of production in the same industry or of a new distribution of those same factors among the different industries. Under a regime of competition, the whole economic movement, in the fields as in the workshops, in the domestic market as in the international one, is nothing but the result of the effort through which millions and millions of men, moved solely by the criterion of their personal advantage, tend to bring about the best utilization of collective reserves. And this is realized precisely in a configuration of equilibrium, in which all the ratios of all the degrees of utility are leveled for all the subjects present on the market. Equilibrium thus represents an ideal goal, which continually shifts in dependence on the continual mutations that occur in the conditions that determine it. The art of economic policy consists in creating those conditions of environment that allow the process of adjustment to unfold naturally with a minimum of friction.
Upon this foundation is erected the system of Pantaleonian individualism, which constitutes the dominant motif of his entire scientific production. It is the exaltation of economic freedom, the foundation of civil progress, the bulwark of moral and political freedom. The State is incapable of substituting itself for individuals in the evaluation of the ratios of the final degrees of utility, and still more in the action directed at achieving their leveling. Its function therefore is not to substitute itself wholly or in part for individuals, but to create the environment within which individuals may freely proceed to the operations of exchange, of production, of investment. When the State does not deviate from this policy, the economy prospers, the industrial world comes to resemble a boiling sea, in which mountains of lava rise, in flows and ebbs, which appear and disappear under the action of competition, a force as powerful as the law of gravitation. The opposite picture is that of paternalism, of dirigisme, of socialism, of collectivism, in all its forms: it is the putrid swamp and constitutes the triumph of incompetence, of incapacity, of careerism, of greed, without restraints and without measure. It ends in parasitism, in ruin, in universal misery.
No one, better than P., has had the happy hand in tracing the diagnosis of this process. To it his scientific activity in the last period of his life is directed, in the vicissitudes of the fortunate first post-war period. His dry, nervous, agile prose has constructed essays that constitute a work of art. The picture briefly traced here does not give a complete measure of the man, acute interpreter of facts, of the creator of economic semiotics, of the profound statesman, of the ingenious historian, who in immortal pages reconstructed living and throbbing vicissitudes of economic institutions. Above all it says nothing of the man, of the charm that emanated from his person, of the great heart. He had the honor of arousing the stimulus of economic research in men such as Vilfredo Pareto and Enrico Barone. Almost all those who cultivated economic studies in Italy, in the period that runs from 1890 to the date of his death in 1924, claimed as they still claim the honor of professing themselves his disciples.
Principal writings: Teoria della traslazione dei tributi (Rome 1882); Dell'ammontare probabile della ricchezza in Italia (ibid. 1884); Principi di Economia pura (Florence 1889,
Milan 1931; English trans., London 1898; Spanish trans., Madrid 1918); Lo scandalo bancario di Torino (in collaboration with G. Poli, Turin 1902); Nuove riflessioni e nuovi documenti (ibid. 1903); Scritti vari di economia, 3 vols. (Palermo 1909-10); Tra le incognite (Bari 1917); Note in margine della guerra (ibid. 1917); Politica: criteri ed eventi (ibid. 1918); La fine provvisoria di un'epopea, (ibid. 1919); Bolscevismo italiano (ibid. 1922); Temi, tesi, problemi e quesiti di economia politica tecnica ed applicata (in collaboration with Broglio d'Azano [ibid. 1923]); Erotemi di Economia (ibid. 1925); La crisi del 1905-1907, edited by Annali di Economia, I, no. 2, Milan 1925; Il sindacalismo e la realtà storica (Collana degli Economisti, V, Turin 1932); Studi storici di economia, collected and edited by A. de' Stefani and A. Del Buttero (Bologna 1938); Studi di finanza e di statistica, collected and edited by A. de' Stefani and A. Del Buttero (Bologna 1938).
Bibliography5 works
Luigi Amoroso