The Charity of the Extremely Wealthy

In this paper, we compare the charitable behavior of billionaires who inherited their wealth to the charitable behavior of those billionaires who made their own wealth. Self-made billionaires are found to be more likely to sign the ‘Giving Pledge’ and more likely to be in the Million Dollar Gifts lists or the Philanthropy Top 50 list of big givers, even after controlling for many other variables that can affect charitable behavior. They also are found to give more conditional on giving. This finding, which is consistent with ‘mental accounting’ occurring even at extremely high stakes, means policy makers in many emerging markets with ‘new’ billionaires better quickly modernize their outdated charity laws.