Vilfredo Pareto Econ 490 Fall 2017

In my experience with different jobs or organizations, the people who act opportunistically will mostly do so whenever they can. On the other hand, I find that people who do not will almost never act this way. It is hard to tell whether this has to do with their own ethics or their particular interest within the group.  One specific experience I have had with opportunistic behavior involves the same job I talked about in my last blog post. I touched a bit on the opportunistic behavior of some of my coworkers during my time working at a video rental store and on one of the managers I had for about have of the time I worked there. The manager did not have a sufficient procedure in place to know what the employees did during their shifts. There was a long list of tasks around the store to do during just one shift such as vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the bathroom, inventory, phone calls, etc. If someone were to do none of these or even just a couple, it would make it hard for the ...

I have worked a few part time jobs in the past, and through this I have noticed the differences in managing tactics that can create certain transaction costs or opportunistic behavior. My last job was working at a video rental store. There was a change in management while I was working there. The differences between the approaches that each manager took was evident, as were the consequences of these different approaches. The first manager was definitely much better at managing out than managing down within the store. Most notably, the way she communicated with the employees was unprofessional and inefficient. It left room for miscommunication that led to transaction costs and opportunistic behavior. When the second manager came in, he was able to set a new tone with steady communication and clear expectations. The first manager did well when doing the tasks in the store herself, but was not clear about the delegation of tasks to the employees under her. Maybe she thought we all sh...

Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist, sociologist, and philosopher born in Paris in 1848. He started his education there until his family moved back to Italy where he continued his education at the Polytechnic Institute in Turin. There he studied mathematics and literature before graduating in 1869. After graduating, he worked as an engineer for a couple railroads. Despite being an active critic of the Italian government's economic policies and publishing work denouncing protectionism and militarism, he did not study economics until the age of forty-two. He was inspired by Pantaleoni's Pure Economics and Leon Walras's work, specifically, the theory of general economic equilibrium. After meeting Pareto, Walras was impressed and pleased with his understanding of his work and quickly became a mentor to him. Pareto eventually took over Walras's work as the Chair of Economics at the University of Lausanne after he retired. There, he began his scientific career, pub...