Statistical modeling of the net worth of billionaires in Africa

Abstract

Africa has the potential to become an economic giant, yet we are aware of no papers modeling the net worth of billionaires in Africa. In this note, we fit the lognormal, Pareto type I, Fréchet, Weibull, generalized extreme value, gamma, log logistic, Burr, generalized Pareto and the generalized beta II distributions to the net worth of billionaires in Africa. The gamma distribution is shown to give the best fit in terms Akaike and Bayesian information criteria and four formal tests. Its goodness of fit is assessed by probability plots, quantile plots, probability density function plots, cumulative distribution function plots and the formal tests. Predictions are given for future net worths of billionaires in Africa.