Abstract
This paper studies the effect of inflation on the return on investment (ROI) required from a project in its first year of operation. This is important because ROI is often used to evaluate the performance of a project once it has been started.
The paper shows that inflation has a marked influence on the required initial ROI of projects. The extent of this effect depends upon the type of assets (the ratios of current, depreciable and non-depreciable assets) and the life of depreciable assets employed.
The analysis shows that decision makers should, under inflation, require a higher initial ROI from projects employing current assets than from projects employing depreciable or non-depreciable assets. It also shows that they should generally require a higher initial ROI from projects employing short life depreciable assets than from projects employing depreciable assets with a longer life.