In Christian Weber's opinion in the preceding article in this journal, although Vilfredo Pareto never wrote his utility function in the Cobb-Douglas form U = rβbrγc, he did present an early, if incomplete, discussion of a Cobb-Douglas utility function. Weber's sections II and III try to document his opinion.

Weber's section II examines Pareto's “Considerazioni” (1892) on the assumption that the marginal utility πi, of good i depends only on the level ri, of consumption of that good. Section III examines Pareto's Manual (1909) on the assumption of “additive separable” utility functions.