I found Pareto's Republic a very useful, novel, insightful and interesting book. It is compact, well organized and written for a large audience ' both for persons unfamiliar with sophisticated economic ideas and for experts in politics and economics, specifically in public choice and public finance.
Pareto's Republic pays tribute to the principle of Pareto-efficiency, which essentially says disagreements over the use of a property (physical or intellectual) can be resolved in ways that no one is made worse off and at least one person is made better off. Once people have exhausted all Pareto improvements possible, they have attained a state of Pareto Efficiency, and perhaps a state of Pareto Optimality.
The book offers some historical background to several fundamental ideas and prescriptions in economics (applied on a daily basis) that are rooted in the application of the Pareto Principle (PP). The book recognizes that conflicts often occur over how resources are or could be used and argues that the PP offers guidance on how to mitigate and sometimes completely resolve conflicts.
Many advanced economics theories and ideas are built on the foundations of the PP, which we take for granted or are unaware of. The argument advanced by Palda is focused on the importance of clear and enforceable property rights. Parties with the property rights are then able to use, modify, and transfer their property for optimal (most productive) use. The book does not pretend to suggest or address issues of fairness, which is altogether another subject matter, and Palda is sincere in not over-extending the PP or over-reaching.
The book clearly states it is impossible to allocate all resources using property rights because sometimes these rights cannot be created or determined. When property rights are absent, private transactions in markets fail to correctly balance social accounts. In such cases, government may step in to correct the imbalances, as it may in the case of public goods, externalities (mitigating negative ones and enhancing positive ones) and common property resources. The book then emphasizes that as technology and the environment evolve, government should reconsider and re-evaluate if it would be socially efficient to withdraw from the economic activity and allow the transactions to be conducted, privately, in open decentralized markets.
Palda applies PP to government spending, taxation and politics and a variety of other public choice and public policy issues. Indeed, the book is compact, lucid and well argued, which most people with economic and intellectual curiosity should and probably would find refreshing, novel, and interesting.
