In 1997 he was awarded the Kapp Prize for the essay 'Transition and the Speciation of the Japanese Model'[2] by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.
Within this context his main contribution has been to endogenise the definition of both means and ends, and to clarify that by considering only leisure as argument of the utility function is tantamount to assuming that workers are physical 'things' not different from iron instead of human beings.
With reference to social scarcity Pagano has suggested a way of integrating the analysis of goods such as prestige and power in economic theory.
[7] In the field of political economy, following the work of Ernest André Gellner, Pagano has established a link between nationalism and globalisation, highlighting similarities and discontinuities.
He has advanced the hypothesis that some of the roots of the crisis are to be found in the institutions of the knowledge economy, in particular the TRIPs, which have substantially increased the cost of investments.