Georges d’Avenel. An economic historian ahead of his time

Abstract Unsatisfied with the traditional history, d’Avenel focused on quantitative data to understand the past. He built series of prices of multiple goods and services from 1200 onwards to document long-term changes in incomes and prices as a result of the technical progress and in inequalities as captured by the top 1%. Criticised by some contemporary historians, his data were used by Vilfredo Pareto, Irving Fisher, Ragner Frisch or Alfred Marshall and are still exploited. His analysis fertilised various fields in particular the Annales School and his findings on social evolutions attract the interest of 21st-century social scientists.