In capital budgeting problems future cash–flows are discounted using the expected one period returns of the investment. In this paper we establish a theory that relates this approach to the assumption that markets are free of arbitrage. Our goal is to uncover implicit assumptions on the set of cash–flow distributions that are suitable for the capital budgeting method. As results we obtain that ...

A major impact on both financial theory and the practice of financial decision making has been the economic instability, especially in prices, evidenced in the U.S. economy since the mid 1960’s. Inflation in the past few years has not been a major macro economic problem, but its spectere, as demonstrated by the Fed’s recent increases in interest rates, is never for the agendas of financial deci...

We examine the optimal choice of hurdle rates in a capital budgeting setting in which a manager receives superior information regarding the profitability of an investment project. Unlike the prior capital budgeting literature that treats the distribution of investment returns as exogenous, we consider a scenario in which the manager can engage in upfront project development activities to improv...

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 disequilibrium systematic risk. It is shown that the disequilibrium net present value implied by this criteri...

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 finance both as a decision rule and as a valuation tool, (iii) the disequilibrium NPV does not gua...