Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (1848 1923)Italian economist, political scientist, and phi-losopher, who had important contributionsto our understanding of income distributionand to the analysis of individuals choices. Anumber of fundamental principles are namedafter him, like Pareto efficiency, Pareto distri-bution (another name for a power-law distri-bution), the Pareto principle (or 80/20 law).