This paper aims to provide a foundation for the notion of economic rate of return and investigate its relations with accounting rates of return. Introducing the notion of depreciation class (the set of depreciation schedules with the same aggregate book value) it is shown that the mean of the...

This paper makes use of a fuzzy expert system to evaluate a strategic investment. In particular, the model proposed aims at replicating the actual decision process accomplished by Florim S.p.a., an Italian ceramic tile firm which recently had the opportunity of buying a firm in the USA. The...

In this work we illustrate a simple logical framework serving the purpose of measuring value creation in a real-life solar photovoltaic project, funded with a lease contract, a loan contract and internal financing (i.e., withdrawal from liquid assets). We use the projected accounting data to...

Dynamics. The Law of Motion -- Statics. The Law of Conservation -- Financial Statements -- Estimating the Cash Flows -- Valuation and Value Creation -- Project Appraisal -- The Quest for a Relative Approach -- Average Internal Rate of Return -- Internal Rate of Return -- Internal Average Rate of...

Evaluating an industrial opportunity often means to engage in financial modelling which results in estimation of a large amount of economic and accounting data, which are then gathered in an economically rational framework: the pro forma financial statements. While the standard net present value...

Literature and textbooks on capital budgeting endorse net present value (NPV) and generally treat accounting rates of return as not being reliable tools. This paper shows that accounting numbers can be reconciled with NPV and fruitfully employed in real-life applications. Focusing on project...

This paper expands Teichroew, Robichek and Montalbano's (TRM) (1965a, b) rate-of-return model into a complete and general model of economic profitability for investment decision-making. Specifically, TRM's assumptions are relaxed and a project rate of return is derived, expressing the project's...

This paper deals with capital budgeting decisions under uncertainty. We present an Aggregate Return On Investment (AROI), obtained as the ratio of total (undiscounted) cash flow to total invested capital and show that it is a genuine rate of return which, compared with the risk-adjusted cost of...