Wealth distribution and Pareto’s law in the Hungarian medieval society

The distribution of wealth in the Hungarian medieval aristocratic society is reported and studied. The number of serf families belonging to a noble is taken as a measure of the corresponding wealth. Our results reveal the power-law nature of this distribution function, confirming the validity of the Pareto law for such a society. The obtained Pareto index α = 0.92 is however smaller than the values currently reported in the literature. We argue that the value close to 1, of the Pareto index is a consequence of the absence of a relevant economic life in the targeted society, in agreement with the prediction of existing wealth distribution models for the idealized case of independently acting agents. Models developed to explain city populations may also be adapted to justify our results.