Students of corporate finance are taught the dangers of judging projects by their internal rate of return. The problem is that the attractiveness of a project depends not just on its rate of return, but on the amount of capital invested in it. You might reasonably prefer a 30 per cent rate of return on a ￡1,000 investment to a 40 per cent rate of return on a ￡10 investment. Ludovic Phalippou, a Dutch economist, has described how this problem makes the use of internal rates of return by proponents of alternative investments more misleading than helpful for investors.
公司金融學的學生們在學校里學到，用內部回報率(IRR)來評判項目是有風險的。問題在于，一個項目的吸引力不僅取決于回報率，還要看投入的資本總額。從情理上講，相比于投資10英鎊，獲得40%的回報，你可能更愿意選擇投資1000英鎊，而獲得30%的回報。荷蘭經濟學家盧多維奇?法利普(Ludovic Phalippou)就曾描述過，由于這個問題的存在，另類投資的擁護者在使用內部回報率時，對投資者起到的更多作用是誤導，而非幫助。