Maffeo Pantaleoni (; 2 July 1857 29 October 1924) was an Italian

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

. Born in Frascati, at first he was a notable proponent of

neoclassical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption, and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a go ...

. Later in his life, before and during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, he became an ardent Italian nationalist and

syndicalist Syndicalism is a labour movement within society that, through industrial unionism, seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes and other forms of direct action, with the eventual goal of gainin ...

, with close ties to the

Italian fascism Italian fascism (), also called classical fascism and Fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian fascism is associated with a series of political parties le ...

movement. He was Minister of Finance in the Carnaro government of Gabriele D'Annunzio at

Fiume Rijeka (; Fiume ( �fjuːme in Italian and in Fiuman Venetian) is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia. It is located in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and in 2021 had a po ...

, which lasted for fifteen months between 1919 and 1920. Shortly before his death in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, he was elected to the

Italian Senate The Senate of the Republic (), or simply the Senate ( ), is the upper house of the bicameral Italian Parliament, the lower house being the Chamber of Deputies. The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform iden ...

Work

Pantaleoni was a major contributor to the Italian school of economics known as La Scienza delle Finanze. His book ''Teoria della Traslazione dei Tributi'' (''Theory of Tax Shifting'') is a pioneering study of

tax incidence In economics, tax incidence or tax burden is the effect of a particular tax on the distribution of economic welfare. Economists distinguish between the entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those on whom the tax is initially imposed. Th ...

. According to

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

winner James M. Buchanan, Pantaleoni and his followers (such as Antonio de Viti de Marco and

Vilfredo Pareto Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (; ; born Wilfried Fritz Pareto; 15 July 1848 – 19 August 1923) was an Italian polymath, whose areas of interest included sociology, civil engineering, economics, political science, and philosophy. He made severa ...

) can be considered the intellectual forefathers of the modern

public choice theory Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science." Gordon Tullock, 9872008, "public choice," '' The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics''. . It includes the study of ...

Family

Maffeo's great-grandniece is American actress Téa Leoni.

Bibliography (selection)

* ''Teoria della traslazione dei tributi'', 1882. * ''Contributions to the Theory of the Distribution of Public Expenditure'', 1883. * ''Dell'ammontare probabile della ricchezza privata in Italia'', 1884. * . * ''A proposito di Luigi Cossa e della sua "Histoire des Doctrines économiques"'', 1898, GdE. * ''Dei criteri che devono informare la storia delle dottrine economiche'', 1898, GdE. * ''An attempt to analyze the concepts of "Strong" and "Weak" in their economic connexion'', 1898, EJ. * ''Una visione cinematografica del progresso della scienza economica, 1870–1907'', 1907, GdE. * ''Note in Margine della Guerra'', 1917. * ''Politica'', 1918. * ''Erotemi di Economica'', 1925.

References

External links

Maffeo Pantaleoni at the New School
1857 births 1924 deaths People from Frascati Italian politicians Historians of economic thought 19th-century Italian economists 20th-century Italian economists 19th-century Italian male writers 20th-century Italian male writers Writers from Lazio Giornale degli economisti e annali di economia editors {{Lazio-politician-stub