Pareto's initial story was that if you had a complete redistribution of wealth so that everybody had the same, soon the previously wealthy would end up with about the same distribution of income. One interesting point: if Pareto's equation is correct, then most statistical estimation methods would not work very well, since it violates the normal distribution. Mendelbrot has made much of this, arguing that economists should see the world in terms of fractals rather than assuming normal distributions. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu