Marshall and Pareto on Cournot’s <i>Elasticity</i> and on W. Thornton

Pareto is ungenerous towards Cournot, even if not as much as Marshall. The author thus goes on and analyses a writing by Pareto (1875) on Thornton, brought to light in 2005. Since in 1875 Pareto does not know Marshall, while he has already in mind the concept of elasticity, the a. deduces that Pareto has no intellectual debt towards Marshall for what concerns the theory of comparative costs developed by Pareto in the <i>Manuale</i> (1906). The a. concludes saying that Pareto recognises all his main intellectual debts, except for Cournot. Baumol and Goldfield’s contrary opinion is due to a linguistic barrier.