This paper shows that the Internal-Rate-of-Return (IRR) approach is unreliable, and that the recently introduced Average-Internal-Rate-of-Return (AIRR) model constitutes the basis for an alternative theoretical paradigm of rate of return. To this end, we divide the paper into two parts: a pars...

In Magni [Eur. J. Operat. Res. 137 (2002) 206] I present some inconsistencies implicit in thenet-present-value criterion, as currently used in finance. This paper shows that the standard use of CAPM for capital budgeting, based on disequilibrium values, is at odds with arbitrage theory, and that...

Accounting measures are traditionally considered not significant from an economic point of view. In particular, accounting rates of return are often regarded economically meaningless or, at the very best, poor surrogates for the IRR, which is held to be "the" economic yield. Likewise, residual...

The IRR problem. As widely known, the IRR has serious flaws: (i)multiple real-valued IRRs may arise, (ii) the meaning of each IRR may be ambiguous (rate of return or rate of cost?), (iii)complex-valued IRRs may arise, (iv) the IRR is, in general, incompatible with the net present value (NPV) in...

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 note specifies some results found in [Magni 2010. The Engineering Economists, 55(2), 150-180] where the Average Internal Rate of Return (AIRR) is presented, which overcome all the IRR difficulties. In particular, the AIRR approach enables to prove that (1) a project is not uniquely...

This paper deals with the problem of modelling in a formal way the concept of excessprofit, also known as residual income. A common idea is that excess profit is an unequivocalconcept, being the diference between profit and costs, where all types of costs are taken into account, included the...

Practitioners and academics in valuation include changes in liquid assets (potential dividends) in the cash flows. This widespread and wrong practice is inconsistent with basic finance theory. We present economic, theoretical, and empirical arguments to support the thesis. Economic arguments...

Two measures of excess profit (residual income) are currently available in the literature: the standard one, of which Economic Value Added (EVA) (Stewart, 1991) is a major instantiation, and Systemic Value Added (SVA) (Magni, 2003, 2004, 2005), also named lost-capital residual income (Magni,...

The internal rate of return (IRR) and the corresponding criterion has well-known difficulties of applicability and reliability. Among other problems, a project may have no real-valued IRR. The latter problem has been recently solved by Magni (2010a), who shows that, for any project, a unique...