This paper illustrates an innovative approach to financial modeling of engineering decisionmaking and industrial projects. The approach is a minimal one, grounded as it is on three notions, two laws, and one matrix that combines them, called Split-Screen Matrix (SSM). This split-screen approach...

This study provides empirical evidence for the efficacy of deriving firms' earnings forecasts from predictions of the complete, conditional probability density function (pdf). Relative to cross-sectional earnings forecasts based on OLS regressions, improvements of accuracy, bias and measures for...

We investigate how managers smooth volatility in balance sheets, using the pension accounting change IAS 19R as a shock to balance sheet volatility. This shock increases pension plans’ funding transparency, which is the source of volatility, without targeting actual plan funding. We find that...

This paper shows that the notion of rate of return is best understood through the lens of the average-internal-rate-of-return (AIRR) model, first introduced in Magni (2010a). It is an NPV-consistent approach based on a coherent definition of rate of return and on the notion of Chisini mean, it...

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,...

XVA models for the calculation of CVA, FVA (see for example (Burgard and Kjaer 2013)), KVA(Green, Kenyon, and Dennis 2014), MVA (Green and Kenyon 2014) and TVA (Kenyon and Green 2014a) have frequently been formulated at the counterparty level. However, it is clear that some elements of the...

This paper applies Magni's (2011) Aggregate Return On Investment (AROI)to investment performance measurement. We show that the ratio of undiscountednet cash flow to undiscounted invested capital is not a naive metric (itseemingly does not take the time value of money into account). It is a...

We show that the standard notion of residual income (RI) does not fulfill additive coherence. This gives rise to ambiguities and inconsistencies. The pitfall resides in the capital charge, which blends a non-market value with a market rate. We solve the problem by using a capital charge based on...

We review here theory and evidence relating to herd behavior, payoff and reputational interactions, social learning, and informational cascades in capital markets. We offer a simple taxonomy of effects, and evaluate how alternative theories may help explain evidence on the behavior of investors,...

This paper proposes a model aiming at decomposing the Net Final Value of a project under certainty. It makes use of a systemic outlook: the investor's net worth is regarded as a dynamic system whose structure changes over time. On this basis, a profitability index is presented, here named...