RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Introducing Excess Return on Time-Scaled Contributions: An Intuitive Return Measure and New Solution to the IRR and PME Problem JF The Journal of Alternative Investments FD Institutional Investor Journals SP 77 OP 91 DO 10.3905/jai.2017.19.4.077 VO 19 IS 4 A1 Yindeng Jiang YR 2017 UL https://pm-research.com/content/19/4/77.abstract AB While the internal rate of return (IRR) remains widely used despite its well-documented flaws, considerable progress has been made in the literature on the search for a proper measure of performance for illiquid investments. Most recently, two general approaches have been proposed—namely the average internal rate of return (AIRR) approach and the aggregate return on investment (AROI) approach—and the following cash flow-based metrics have appeared in the literature: the economic AIRR, the index comparison method (ICM)-based AROI, and the direct alpha method. Motivated by the AIRR approach, the author presents a new cash flow-based metric, excess return on time-scaled contributions (ERTC), that is free from all the IRR flaws and represents a solution to the public market equivalent (PME) problem. ERTC is intuitively defined as the ratio of net present value to the aggregate discounted net contributions scaled by the length of time the net contribution is relevant to the investment. The author shows that ERTC can be obtained as a special case of the continuous version of AIRR with an ICM-based assumption on capital growth. Moreover, as part of the definition of ERTC, the author introduces a decomposition procedure that can be adapted to help ensure value consistency (i.e., value additivity and consistency with known market values) for all cash flow-based AIRR or AROI metrics.TOPICS: Real assets/alternative investments/private equity, performance measurement