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home buyer finance the same house, the size issue is not a concern. Also, the typical home mortgage<br />

involves a cash inflow at the beginning and then only cash outflows over the period when the<br />

borrower must pay back the loan. Thus, there is only one sign change among the cash flows.<br />

Borrowers can thus compare mortgages on the basis of their IRRs. They should calculate the cash<br />

flows over the horizon during which they expect to pay back the mortgage, and should then choose the<br />

lowest-IRR mortgage from among those whose monthly payments are affordable. The annual<br />

percentage rate (APR) quoted by mortgage companies is the IRR of the mortgage calculated after<br />

factoring in points and origination fees and assuming the mortgage will not be prepaid.<br />

Innovations in Capital Budgeting<br />

While a general consensus has been reached that wealth maximization is the objective of optimal<br />

capital budgeting, the tools for measuring wealth creation and the indicators that business policy is<br />

succeeding at that goal continue to evolve. The fact that new paradigms are still being invented tells us<br />

that NPV is not the last word in capital budgeting. Analysts and investors are constantly looking for<br />

better tools for making long-range capital decisions. An approach known as Economic Value Added<br />

(EVA®) was introduced by the consulting firm Stern Stewart & Company, which owns the term as a<br />

registered trademark. Another advanced paradigm known as “real options” is complex but gaining<br />

traction.<br />

Economic Value Added<br />

Economic Value Added (EVA®) is an accounting metric that aims to capture how much wealth a<br />

company creates in a given year. EVA is the amount of invested capital multiplied by the spread<br />

between the company‟s return on invested capital and its cost of capital. EVA aims to measure wealth<br />

creation in a given year rather than over the life of a project. EVA‟s advocates advise managers to<br />

adopt projects that maximize EVA and manage projects so as to maximize EVA each year. Managers<br />

should monitor projects and make modifications, award incentives, and impose penalties to<br />

continuously boost EVA.<br />

Real Options<br />

The real options paradigm seeks to measure not only the value of a project‟s forecast cash flows but<br />

also the value of strategic flexibility that a project creates for a company. For example, suppose a<br />

company is contemplating an initiative to market its wares on the Internet. The forecast cash flows<br />

may be weak, but establishing a presence on the Internet may be valuable in that it wards off potential<br />

competition and creates opportunities that can later be exploited. The option to expand or the<br />

flexibility to later pursue a wide range of initiatives is captured using the real option paradigm,<br />

whereas the value of these options is usually missed completely in the standard NPV approach. The<br />

real options paradigm entails identifying the strategic options inherent in a proposed project and then<br />

valuing them using modern mathematical option-pricing formulas. If the value of a proposed project

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