Background
BARONE, Enrico was born in 1859 in Italy.
economist Military historian Soldier
BARONE, Enrico was born in 1859 in Italy.
Barone was a career army officer until the age of 48, attaining early eminence in this profession. When he was only 35, he was appointed a professor at the War College in Turin, which prepared officers destined for general staff duty. He wrote extensively in the field of military history and strategy. However, like Pareto, he had been introduced to economic theory by Maffeo Pantaleoni, and his involvement with it during his army career was far greater than that even of the passionately devoted amateur. He began as early as 1895 to seek a chair in economics in order to devote his full attention to the field, but not until 1907, when he received a professorship at the Istituto di Scienze Economiche in Rome, was he to achieve his desire. (At this time he resigned his commission as general staff colonel.) Paradoxically, all his lasting contributions to economics were made in the period of his army career.
Barone is the author of several contributions to economics, including a famous theorem of revenue and taxes that bears his name. He was the first to define the conditions under which a market governed by a regime of perfect competition is Pareto efficient. He expanded the concept of "Pareto efficiency", arguing that not all the losers can be compensated for deviations from the conditions of competitive balance. He introduced the proportions to factor in the variable ' neoclassical economics, contributing to the theory of marginal productivity, which is considered the father. He extended the conditions of General equilibrium theory Walrasian, suggesting the feasibility of the movement trial and error towards the ' market equilibrium. He was a pioneer of the theory of economic indexes. All this without the use of curves utility or indifference.
Baron has been described as "one of the founders of the pure theory of the socialist economy." In 1908, he presented a mathematical model for the economy collectivist whereby certain conditions, later identified with the shadow prices, had to be met to order to achieve the "maximum collective welfare." The latter corresponds to the price of production at minimum cost Pareto efficiency achieved in competitive balance. He pointed out that this result could not be achieved a priori but only through experimentation on a large scale with high requirements in terms of data collection, even assuming the fixity of production relations. With these assumptions, he suggested that the movement towards economic efficiency in collectivist economy is not inconceivable. For this regime, whatever the rule of distribution adopted by the Ministry of Production, the same economic categories would reappeared in terms of prices, wages, interest, rent, profit, savings, etc.., though perhaps with different names. His analysis, and the answers of the Austrian economists, fueled the debate on the problem of economic calculation and market socialism in the 30s of XX century. His method also anticipated the formulation by Abram Bergson's social welfare function three decades later.
"Le opere economiche"
"Sur un livre récent de Wicksteed"
'The Ministry of Production in the Collectivist State'
Military history