In this paper, when the parameter of interest is the shape parameter in Pareto distribution, we develop likelihood based inference for this parameter. Specially, we develop signed log-likelihood ratio statistic and the modified signed log-likelihood ratio statistic for the shape parameter. It is well-known that as sample size grows, the modified signed log-likelihood ratio statistic converges to standard normal distribution faster than the signed log-likelihood ratio statistic. But the computation of the modified signed log-likelihood statistic is hard or even impossible when the sufficient statistics and the ancillary statistics are not clear. In this case, one can consider an approximation to the modified signed log-likelihood statistic. Specially, when the parameter of interest is informationally orthogonal to the nuisance parameters, we propose the approximate modified signed log-likelihood statistic. Through simulation, we investigate the performances of the proposed statistics with the signed log-likelihood statistic.