Nature, Nurture or Chance? The Debate on the Status of Pareto’s Law

The problem of the status of Pareto’s law is still uncertain: is it an “empirical” formula, a “statistical” law, a “social-institutional” law or a “natural” law? Scholars give highly contrasting responses to this question; even Pareto himself showed a certain ambiguity, assuming positions that were partly contradictory. The aim of the paper is to show that in the author of the Cours the idea that his “law of in-comes” is a “natural law” prevails, as it depends on individuals social heterogeneity.