Back to Search
Start Over
W.E. Johnson’s 1913 Paper and the Question of His Knowledge of Pareto
- Publication Year :
- 2005
-
Abstract
- In December 1913, William Ernest Johnson (1858–1931), a Cambridge logician, published a famous article on demand theory in the Economic Journal (EJ) entitled “The Pure Theory of Utility Curves.” Although Johnson's treatment of the subject was in some ways original, in others it strongly resembled the analysis set forth by Vilfredo Pareto in earlier contributions, particularly in the Manuel d'économie politique (Italian edition 1906, French edition 1909). Despite this resemblance, Johnson did not cite Pareto. This failure to acknowledge Pareto's precedence aroused resentment and some suspicion of plagiarism among the Italian Paretians. In the end, however, the Paretian economists of the period generally assumed that Johnson was unfamiliar with Pareto's works and had obtained his results independently. For example, in 1916, Luigi Amoroso published a review of Johnson's 1913 paper in the Giornale degli Economisti, in which he wrote, “From Johnson's article it comes out that Johnson does not know Pareto's work” (Amoroso 1916, p. 410, author's translation). Amoroso attributed Johnson's ignorance of Pareto's work to a more general ignorance on the part of English economists, “Johnson's lacuna, more than particular to him, is a lacuna of the area in which he lives” (Amoroso 1916, p. 410, author's translation).
- Subjects :
- Johnson, Pareto, Cambridge School, Consumer Theory, Complementarity
Resentment
jel:B31
General Arts and Humanities
media_common.quotation_subject
jel:B21
Subject (philosophy)
Pareto principle
jel:B13
Ignorance
William Ernest Johnson
Vilfredo Pareto
Teoria del consumatore
History and Philosophy of Science
On demand
Economics
Positive economics
General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Period (music)
media_common
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....46e16cab0894f5adf885ebdbc7f15689