The notion of Net Present Value (NPV) is thought to formally translate the notion of economic profit, where the discount rate is the cost of capital. The latter is the expected rate of return of an equivalent-risk alternative that the investor might undertake and is often found by making...

This paper focuses on inconsistencies arising from the use of NPV and CAPM for capital budgeting. It shows that (i) CAPM capital budgeting decision-making based on disequilibrium NPV is deductively inferred by the Capital Asset Pricing Model, (ii) the use of the disequilibrium NPV is widespread...

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...

This paper shows that (i) project valuation via disequilibrium NPV+CAPM contradicts valuation via arbitrage pricing, (ii) standard CAPM-minded decision makers may fail to profit from arbitrage opportunities, (iii) standard CAPM-based valuation violates value additivity. As a consequence, the...

This paper shows that a decision maker using the CAPM for valuing firms and making decisions may contradict Modigliani and Miller’s Proposition I, if he adopts the widely-accepted disequilibrium NPV. As a consequence, CAPM-minded agents employing this NPV are open to arbitrage losses and miss...

This paper deals with the CAPM-derived capital budgeting criterion, and in particular with Rubinstein’s (1973) criterion, according to which a project is profitable if the project rate of return is greater than the risk-adjusted cost of capital, where the latter depends on the project’s...

This paper shows that a decision maker using the CAPM for valuing firms and making decisions may contradict Modigliani and Miller’s Proposition I, if he adopts the widely-accepted disequilibrium NPV. As a consequence, CAPM-minded agents employing this NPV are open to arbitrage losses and miss...

This paper presents an axiomatization of residual income, aka excess profit, and illustrates how it may univocally engenders fixed-income or variable-income assets. In the first part it is shown that, depending on the relations between excess profit and the investor's excess wealth, a...