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...

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 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...

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,...

This paper analyzes the relations among different concepts such as earnings, profit, interest, rate, consumption, dividend, installment, cash flow, capital. It aims atembracing these notions in a unique conceptual "umbrella" , consisting of five perspectives: (1) accounting, (2) economic theory,...

This paper proposes a method for evaluating a project under certainty by means of a systemic outlook, which borrows from accounting the way of representing economic facts while replacing accounting values with cash values. The investor's net worth is regarded as a system whose structure changes...

The internal rate of return (IRR) is often used by managers and practitioners for investment decisions. Unfortunately, it has serious flaws: (i) multiple real-valued IRRs may arise, (ii) complex-valued IRRs may arise, (iii) the IRR is, in general, incompatible with the net present value (NPV) in...