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Is the wealth of the world’s billionaires Paretian?

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  • Ogwang, Tomson

Abstract

This paper investigates the issue of whether or not the top world wealth distribution is Paretian in nature. To this end, Forbes’ data on the net worth of the world’s billionaires for each of the ten years from 2000 to 2009 is used. The results of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS), Anderson–Darling (AD) and chi-squared tests for Pareto power law conducted do not reveal any evidence of Paretian behavior at the conventional 5% level of significance.

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  • Ogwang, Tomson, 2013. "Is the wealth of the world’s billionaires Paretian?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(4), pages 757-762.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:392:y:2013:i:4:p:757-762
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2012.10.026
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    Cited by:

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    3. Capehart, Kevin W., 2014. "Is the wealth of the world’s billionaires not Paretian?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 395(C), pages 255-260.
    4. Gao, Baojun & Chan, Wai Kin (Victor) & Li, Hongyi, 2015. "On the increasing inequality in size distribution of China's listed companies," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 25-41.
    5. Frank A. Cowell & Philippe Kerm, 2015. "Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 671-710, September.

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