This article introduces an original dataset of formal political participation for over 2,000 individuals included in the Forbes Billionaires List. We find that billionaire politicians are a surprisingly common phenomenon: Over 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office. Even compared to other elite groups known for producing politicians from their ranks, this is a high rate of political participation. Moreover, billionaires focus their political ambitions on influential positions, have a strong track record of winning elections, and lean to the right ideologically. We also document substantial cross-national variation: A country’s number of billionaire politicians is not simply a product of its total number of billionaires but is instead related to regime type. Indeed, billionaires formally enter the political sphere at a much higher rate in autocracies than in democracies. We conclude by discussing the normative implications of our findings and outlining a new research agenda on billionaire politicians.

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The Original dataset had some incongruencies in the collection of the data for the feature "Source".

The feature "Source" aims at capturing the main origin of the billionaires' accumulated wealth. However, Forbes had adopted an inconsistent approach in collecting these data. When the source of wealth is connected with a popular or well-known company, then the Company name is reported (i.e. Amazon, Microsoft, Google and so forth). In other instances, the economic sector where the billionaire business operates is reported (i.e., software, machinery, food and beverage, and so forth).

For instance, Bill Gates' source of wealth is recorded as "Microsoft", while for Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle), the dataset mentions a generic "software". Jeff Bezos's source is Amazon, but e-commerce is the provenience of Jack Ma's wealth. This approach creates series of difficulties when aggregating the data. When billionaires are grouped by the "Source" as it appears in the original dataset, billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Jack Ma would be classified in two different buckets. However, they both operate in the same economic sector.

Therefore, the dataset was reviewed to standardize the "Source" entries. As a result, taking the first six wealthiest people in the world as an example, Amazon becomes e-commerce, Tesla is replaced by "electric vehicles", LVMH by "luxury good", Microsoft by "software", Facebook by "social media" and Berkshire Hathaway by "finance".

Acknowledgements Skimmed the data from forbes.com Based on the original dataset uploaded here by Alexander Bader : Link

As of March 2025, Elon Musk had a net worth valued at 328.5 billion U.S. dollars, making him the richest man in the world. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos followed in second, with Marc Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, in third. The list is dominated by Americans, and Alice Walton and Francoise Bettencourt Meyers are the only women among the 20 richest people worldwide.

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Who is going to win the space race? Billionaires and their missions. What do the people think?

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This dataset contains tweets from Twitter regarding the recent Space Race involving Billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and their respective Companies - SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

Use the dataset to perform Sentimental Analysis and come to an conclusion what do the people think about Billionaires and their Space related Companies. Find out who is winning the Space Race 🚀....