Measuring the Economic Rate of Return on Assets

This paper (1) describes a procedure for correctingthe deficiencies associated with the accounting rateof return, and for capitalizing the intangible assetscreated by the firm's R & D expenditures; and (2)demonstrates the superiority of the derived measure ofrate of return in a fixed effects model testing therelative influence of firm and industry effects onreturns. Both of these influences are shown to bemuch stronger than in previous empirical work.