International Journal of Economics and Finance www.ccsenet.

org/ijef

Economic Value Added (EVA) - Literature Review

and Relevant Issues
Dr. Anil K. Sharma
Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Roorkee-247667, India
Tel: 91-13-3228-5632 E-mail: anilfdm@iitr.ernet.in

Satish Kumar (Corresponding author)

Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Roorkee-247667, India
Tel: 91-92-8664-3008 E-mail: satisddm@iitr.ernet.in
Abstract
This paper aims to present a narrative literature review of 112 papers published on the EVA from 1994 to 2008. It
provides a classification scheme, identifies the gaps in existing literature and suggests the direction for future
research. Studies are classified and presented on the basis of the time period, issues covered, distribution of
literature in various sources, methodology used, country-wise publications and contributions made by the
researchers on the concept. The studies conducted in the developed countries have largely been found to be
supporting EVA though there are certain studies in these countries too that consider conventional measures as
better tools of corporate performance reporting. However, in developing economies less numbers of studies are
available supporting the empirical validity of the concept as a corporate performance measurement tool. The
concept of EVA has gained significant attention in the advanced economies, but implementation issues and its
validity is under debate all over the world. The paper presents a comprehensive literature review and a critical
analysis to move towards the advances in EVA. It may be a very useful source of information to the researchers
and managers who wish to understand and implement EVA and carry out further research on the diverse issues of
this interesting and value adding performance metric.
Keywords: EVA, Market Value Added, NOPAT, Traditional measures, ROE, SHV
1. Introduction
Maximizing shareholders value has become the new corporate paradigm in recent years. The Corporates, which
gave the lowest preference to shareholders curiosity, are now bestowing the utmost preference to it.
Shareholder’s wealth is measured in terms of returns they receive on their investment. It can either be in forms of
dividends or in the form of capital appreciation or both. Capital appreciation depends on the changes in the
market value of the stocks. The market value of stocks depends upon number of factors ranging from company
specific to market specific. Financial information is used by various stakeholders to assess firm’s current
performance and to forecast the future as well.
The empirical studies highlight that there is no single accounting measure which explains the variability in the
shareholders wealth (Chen and Dodd, 1997; Rogerson, 1997). Any financial measures used in assessing firm’s
performance must be highly correlated with shareholders wealth and on the other hand should not be subjected to
randomness inherent in it. Traditional performance measures such as NOPAT, EPS, ROI, ROE etc. have been
criticized due to their inability to incorporate full cost of capital thereby accounting income is not a consistent
predictor of firm value and cannot be used for measuring corporate performance. Value based management
system has gained popularity in academic literature in last two decades. One such innovation in the field of
internal and external performance measurement is EVA. (Note 1)
Pioneered and advocated by US based business consultant Stern Stewart and company argue that EVA can be
used instead of earnings or cash from operations as measures of both internal and external performance.
“Abandon earnings per share”, “Earnings, earnings per share, and earnings growth are misleading measures of
corporate performance” and “The best practical periodic performance measure is EVA” (Stewart 1991). Further
to support his hypothesis that EVA is a better performance measures than other performance measures Stewart
(1994) cites in-house research indicating that “EVA stands well out from the crowd as the single best measures of

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value creation on continuous basis”. He further remarks that ‘EVA is almost 50% better than accounting based
measures in explaining changes in the shareholders wealth”. Apart from this popular study, support for EVA has
been acknowledged from other sources, Fortune, which regularly publishes EVA performance rating since 1993
has acknowledged EVA under different notations “today’s hottest financial idea”, “The Real way to creating
wealth” and “A new way to find Bargains”. Proponents of EVA have made following principles claims about
EVA:-
1) EVA helps in reducing Agency conflict and improve decision making (Costigan & Lovata, 2002; Biddle et al.
1999 )
2) EVA is more strongly associated with stock return than other measures. (Maditinos et al., 2006; Lehen and
Makhija,1997)
3) EVA Improves Stock Performance (Ferguson et al., 2005)
4) EVA adds more informational content in explaining stock returns (Erasmus, 2008; Chen and Dodd, 1997; Kim,
2006; Palliam, 2006)
5) EVA and Market Value are correlated (Lefkowitz, 1999; O’Byrne, 1996; Uyemura, 1996; Peterson and
Peterson, 1996).
Before proceeding further on the concept, let us first understand the concept of EVA.
2. The Concept of EVA
In 1990 a new device was formulated to gauge the profitability of a concern, which is known as ‘EVA’. This
concept is, as a matter of fact, a reversion to the formulation of Alfred Marshal (1890) which he put forward in
early nineteenth century. The EVA of the company is just a measure of the incremental return that the investment
earns over the market rate of return. In simple terms, it can be stated that EVA measures the profitability net of
cost of capital. As someone has aptly remarked, ‘you only get richer if you invest money at a higher return than
the cost of money to you’. Everybody knows this but many seem to forget it. Thus, EVA can be taken as the net
operating profit minus an appropriate charge for the opportunity cost of all the capital invested in an enterprise.
As such, EVA is an estimate of true economic profit or the amount by which earnings exceed or fall short of the
required minimum rate of return that shareholder and lenders could get by investing in other securities of
comparable risk.
2.1 Calculation of EVA
EVA is the surplus left after making an appropriate charge for the capital employed in the business. It can be
calculated in the following way.
EVA = NOPAT – (TCE x WACC) ……………….. (1)
Where,
NOPAT = Net operating profit after tax
TCE = Total capital employed
WACC= Weighted average cost of capital
While calculation of NOPAT, the non-operating items like dividend/interest on securities invested outside the
business, non-operating expenses etc. will not be considered. The total capital employed is the sum of
shareholders funds as well as loan funds. But this does not include investments outside the business. In
determining the WACC, cost of debt is taken as after tax cost and cost of equity is measured on the basis of
capital asset pricing method. Under capital asset pricing model, cost of equity, i. e, Ke is given by the following:
Ke = Rf + bi (Rm- Rf) …………………… (2)
Where,
Rf = Risk free return
Rm = Expected market rate of return
bi = Risk coefficient of particular investment
The cost of capital is thus the most important aspect of EVA. Under the traditional methods most companies
appear to be profitable whereas in reality, they are not. As Peter Drucker (1995, p.59) has observed, “Until a
business returns a profit that is greater than its cost of capital, it operates at a loss. Never mind that it pays taxes,
as if it had a genuine profit. The enterprise still returns less to the economy than it devours in resources... until
then it does not create wealth; it destroys it.” EVA takes this fact into consideration and states that managers
must pay for the capital they are utilizing, just as if it were a wage. From the Table I, it is clear that traditional

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measure of corporate performance does not consider cost of capital in calculation of NOPAT whereas EVA
includes the same.
3. Rationale and Scope of the Study
There has been a growing concern about the performance measures based on traditional accounting information
such as Return on Equity (ROE), Earning per Shares (EPS), Net operating profit after taxes (NOPAT) and Return
on Investment (ROI) etc. As discussed in the introductory part of this paper, these measures although widely
used fails to capture the shareholders value creation/destruction as a result of management actions. The concept
of EVA has gained popularity all over the world particularly in USA, UK and European countries as companies
are using EVA as an internal as well as external performance measure because it is consistent with the
organizational objective of shareholder’s value creation. Due to its popularity lot of research work has been
conducted in late 1990’s covering diverse issues on EVA. Although theoretically the significance of EVA has
been proved but there exist gaps between the various studies about the superiority of EVA. In some academic
literature EVA has been proved superior to traditional measures and some studies reject this hypothesis partially
or fully. In the light of above, present study has been conducted to find out various issues underlying EVA and to
present them at a single place. Another rational of this review paper is that empirical studies conducted till date
on EVA in different countries have used different methodology and variables to prove their respective hypothesis.
This study is a step to bring out those methodologies and variables in order to determine the direction for future
research on EVA. The paper covers empirical studies conducted and published on EVA during 1994 to 2008.
3.1 Objectives of the Study
The study has been conducted with the primary objectives like arranging the publications on EVA in an orderly
manner so as to enable easy and quick access, classifying literature on EVA and analyzing the outcome of the
studies reviewed. Identifying gaps in the existing literature and suggesting the course of future research on EVA
are some added objectives of the paper.
3.2 Data and Methodology
The paper is based upon studies conducted on EVA in various countries and published in various sources. A total
of 112 papers (from 61 refereed journals and international conferences) have been reviewed. The distribution of
articles reviewed from various sources is given in Table II. All these papers are classified on the basis of various
approaches & issues covered and presented in Table III. Literature related to EVA addresses issues like EVA and
MVA (Note 2) relationship, EVA and stock returns, Value based management, discounting techniques and EVA,
EVA concepts, limitations, advantages and implementation, EVA as strategy and literature review (Figure I). All
the studies reviewed are also classified on the basis of methodologies used that are given in Table III & Figure 2.
The following part covers detailed description on literature on EVA.
4. Literature on EVA
Various articles dealing with the theory and applications of EVA have been published over the last 15 years, but
the concept is still under development and debate particularly in developed countries. Worthington and West
(2001) reviewed the literature on EVA and provided a synoptic survey of EVA’s conceptual underpinnings. They
concluded that empirical evidences concerning EVA have been mixed. There is strong need for research over a
longer time frame to allow greater empirical certainty on the status of EVA as a corporate performance measure.
Pal and Sura (2007) reviewed 25 empirical studies published in various journals related to relationship of EVA
and stock returns. They have only reviewed the results of the studies and have not considered other issues
prevalent in EVA research such as EVA-MVA relationship, EVA and discounting techniques, other residual
income (Note 3) based techniques, EVA implementation and EVA and managerial performance and control. Till
date no other study has been conducted to cover the issues involved in research about EVA. In the present paper
we have covered various issues on EVA by reviewing 112 studies on the concept. Apart from this, we have also
categorized the studies based on methodologies used by various researchers, country and year-wise publication
and breakup of literature reviewed on research related to EVA which is presented in Table III. Some important
observations based on the classification of the literature on EVA are given in the following part:-
4.1 Breakup of Literature on EVA
Literature on EVA can broadly be classified into seven sub- themes. These are EVA and stock returns, EVA-
MVA relationship, managerial behavior and performance management, concept, criticism & implementations
issues of EVA, value management & EVA, discounting approaches and their relationship with EVA and review
studies on EVA. A brief description of these issues is presented in the following section explaining sub topics
covered under each issue.

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4.1.1 EVA and stock returns- This is the most widely covered aspect in the number of studies conducted on the
concept of EVA. This includes literature on relationship of EVA and firm performance, evidences from stock
returns, comparison of EVA with other accounting measures, portfolio selection tool, testing information content
of EVA, error–rate, earning forecasts and residual income model etc.
4.1.2 EVA –MVA relationship - This concept includes literature on linkages between EVA and MVA of
companies, EVA as proxy for MVA, correlation between EVA & MVA, value drivers, firm performance and
MVA, inter-industry analysis and survey, effectiveness of EVA and efficacy score approach etc.
4.1.3 Managerial behavior and performance management- It includes literature on wealth creation, managerial
compensation, agency theory & EVA, performance & compensation, performance evaluation profit sharing and
gain sharing plans & EVA aspects.
4.1.4 Concept, criticism & implementation- This aspect covers literature on EVA as financial management
system, strategy, implementation, limitations, facts & fantasy, misconceptions, EVA - adjustments etc.
4.1.5 Value management- Value based management (VBM), true value, value creation & measurement,
investment recovery and value added, cash value added and share holder value creation, shareholder value
drivers etc. are some important aspects that have been studied under this category.
4.1.6 Discounting approaches- EVA relationship to NPV, (Note 4) reconciliation of variations of DCF valuation,
inflation adjustments, Residual Income & DCF (Note 5) approaches etc. are the issues covered under discounting
approaches.
4.1.7 Literature survey- Studies covering comprehensive literature survey are included in this category.
It is thus clear from Table IV and Figure 1 that empirical evidences on EVA and stock returns seem to be the
dominant research theme. Majority of researchers have worked on EVA and stock returns, as 58 articles out of
112 are on this aspect. Another popular category of research is EVA and its relationship with Market value added
(MVA). Only two articles out of 112 studies reviewed have been found to be created on survey of literature that
justifies the need for more such studies on literature survey and other related aspects of EVA.
4.2. Methodologies used in the studies under review
In the process of reviewing literature on EVA we have also classified the studies on the basis of methodologies
used. Different methodologies used by the various researchers are divided into four categories which are
conceptual, descriptive, empirical and exploratory cross-sectional. Conceptual papers are those covering
basic/fundamental concepts in EVA while studies providing explanation or description of EVA content or process
and implementation issues are classified as descriptive studies. Empirical studies cover those which have taken
data from existing databases, reviews and case studies. Studies in which data collection is done through survey
are classified as exploratory cross-sectional. Table III and figure 2 exhibit the description of methodology used
by various researchers over a period of time, while Table V enumerates the studies conducted using different
methodologies. As evident from the Table V, out of 112 studies reviewed, 80 are based on empirical
methodology that constitutes 71 percent of total studies reviewed. Only 4 percent studies have used exploratory
cross-sectional methodology which is the least as compared to conceptual (7 percent) and descriptive (18 percent)
approaches. Year- wise and country wise publication on EVA is presented in the following part.
4.3. Year -wise and country-wise publication of literature on EVA
The book by Stewart, The Quest for Value (1991), introduces EVA and market value added measures and their
benefits. Since then, lots of studies have been conducted on various issues related to EVA. Table VI and Figure 3
summarize year wise break up of studies conducted on EVA. One interesting observation that can be had from
Table VI that only 24 (21.4 percent) studies have been published in important journals till 1999, and the
remaining 88 (78.6 percent) were published during 2000 -2008. Table VII and Figure 4 summarize the
country-wise studies on EVA. One interesting observation that can be drawn from figure 4, that 45 percent (51
articles) studies belong to USA, 19 percent (21 articles) pertain to India and 21 percent (23 articles) studies are
conducted in countries like Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Malaysia etc. Since the concept of EVA was
originated from US market hence more popular in same country. It seems that China and UK lag behind as far as
research on the concept of EVA is concerned. Some empirical evidences on EVA form succeeding part in the
paper.
5. Empirical evidences on EVA
There has been a growing debate on what influences share prices of a company. A large number of studies have
investigated the relationship between accounting numbers and stock returns. Traditionally, studies have focused

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on accounting profits and earnings but now residual income and cash flow have attracted considerable attention
of researchers all over the world. In this review paper a large number of empirical studies on EVA have been
presented and their results have been analyzed in order to validate the hypothesis associated with EVA. Careful
analysis of literature reveals that any source of accounting based information can influence the share prices. The
empirical analysis suggests that earnings generally dominate in explaining variability in stock returns. But
earnings should not be relied upon because of its inability to incorporate full cost of capital. It is partially
because of this limitation and partially because of increased demand by investors and analysts to correctly
identify firm value, the need for research in this area has been intensified.
In contrast to earnings, EVA which is the difference between after -tax operating profits and total cost of capital
is a true measure of corporate profitability. As value is the main concern for shareholders, advocates of EVA
claim that it is only performance measure that link directly to stock’s intrinsic value (Stewart 1991). This as well
as other important issues have been covered in the studies conducted on EVA as compared to the traditional
measures of firm performance. The following section deals with identifying and highlighting important issues
that establishes the relationship between EVA and firm performance and other conventional measures of
corporate performance reporting.
5.1 Relationship between Economic Value and Stock Returns.
Proponents of EVA claim that EVA is highly correlated with stock returns. EVA derives stock prices (Stewart,
1995; Medeiros, 2005) better than other accounting based performance indicators. Lefkowitz (1999) analyzed
the US companies and results of the study supported Stern- Stewart hypothesis, i.e., EVA is better correlated with
stock returns as compared to traditional performance measures. They found that EVA is reasonably reliable guide
to understand the firm’s value. Machuga et al. (2002) in their study highlighted that EVA can be used to enhance
future earnings predictions. Lehn & Makhija (1997) investigated the degree of correlation between different
performance measures and stock market returns. The results indicate that EVA is the most highly correlated
measure with stock returns. Various Studies are also conducted on Incremental information content tests of EVA
and provide evidences that it adds significant explanatory power to EPS (Note 6) in explaining stock returns.
Bao and Bao (1998) studied the usefulness of EVA and abnormal economic earnings of US firms and results
indicate that EVA is a significant factor in market returns and its explanatory power is higher than that of
accounting earnings. Chen and Dodd (1997) reported that EVA measure provides relatively more information
than the traditional measures of accounting profits. They also found that EVA and RI (Residual Income)
variables are highly correlated and identical in terms of association with stock returns. Worthington and West
(2004) provided Australian evidences regarding the information content of EVA and concluded that stock returns
to be more closely associated with EVA than residual income, earnings and net cash flow.
There are some studies that do not support the claim that EVA provides better stock returns. (Biddle et al., 1997
and 1999) analyzed a sample of firms over the period 1984-93 by comparing the stock market adjusted returns
against EVA, Residual Income and Operating Cash Flow. The results do not support that EVA dominates
traditional performance measures in its association with the stock market returns. Ismail (2006) conducted a
study on EVA and its association with stock returns viz- a- viz accounting earnings and stock returns and found
that net operating profit after taxes and net income outperform EVA in explaining stock returns. Further, this
study states that accruals and operating cash flows have significant incremental information content than EVA.
Peterson and Peterson (1996) analyzed traditional and value-added measures of performance and their
relationship with stock returns. Their findings state that traditional measures are not empirically less related to
stock returns than return on value added measures. Kyriazis and Anastassis (2007) in their study of Greek firms
concluded that relative information content tests reveal that net and operating income appear to be more valuable
than EVA. EVA components add only marginal information content as compared to accounting profit.
One interested finding related to literature is that most of researchers have used R2 and panel data regression
model to measure value relevance. Recent evidences suggest that these measures may be affected by presence of
scale effects in levels regressions (Das and Lev, 1994). Various reasons are suggested by various researchers
(Biddle 1998) why EVA performs relatively poor in comparison with other measures like earnings in explaining
the stock returns. The important reasons are estimation errors in calculating capital charge (WACC) and
accounting adjustments as compared to what market is using to value firms.
5.2 EVA adoption and firm value
Firms that adopt EVA appear to have above the average profitability relative to their peers both before and after
the adoption of EVA. Further evidences also state that EVA adopters experience increased profitability relative to
their peer after adoption of EVA (Ferguson et al.). Further, firms using EVA exhibit a higher percentage of

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institutional ownership and a lower percentage of insider ownership than non-adopters (Lovata & Costigan,
2002). Grant (1996) conducted a survey to examine the relationship between EVA and Firm Value. Results
suggest that EVA significantly impacts the firm value. EVA, REVA (Note 7) and MVA are better measures of
firm value (Anand et al. 1999)
A major study that addresses the changes made by EVA adopters is by Wallace (1997). It examines the resultant
performance of firms using EVA and other residual income techniques. He finds that EVA adopters dispose of
more assets and fewer new investments. Shareholders get what they pay for; i.e. performance is greater in the
areas that are reinforced by the EVA bonus plan. Biddle et al. (1998) concluded that managers respond to EVA
incentives but there is no evidence thus far to support claims that EVA is more associated with firm value than
net income.
5.3 Relationship between EVA and Market Value Added (MVA)
Stewart (1991) examined the relationship between EVA and MVA of US companies and found a stronger
correlation between EVA and MVA. Kramer and Pushner (1997) studied the strength of relationship between
EVA and MVA. They found that MVA and NOPAT were positive on average but the average EVA over the period
was negative. EVA unlike other earnings measures is systematically linked to the market value and it is powerful
tool for understanding the investor expectations (O’ Byrne, 1996; Finegan, 1991). Ghanbari and More (2007)
analyzed the relationship between EVA and MVA of automobile industry in India and results indicate that there
are strong evidences to support Stern- Stewart’s claim.
There are some studies which claim that traditional measures have better correlation with MVA. Fernandez
(2001) examined the correlation between EVA and MVA of 582 American companies for the period 1983-97. It
was shown that for 296 firms in the sample the changes in the NOPAT had higher correlation with changes in
MVA than the EVA, while for 210 sample firms the correlation between EVA and MVA was negative. Wet (2005)
conducted a study on EVA–MVA relationship of 89 Industrial firms of South Africa and found that EVA did not
show the strongest correlation with MVA.
5.4 EVA and Managerial Performance
An appropriate performance measure should assess how managerial actions affect the firm value. In this regard
EVA is considered as better alternative to the traditional performance measures such as Profits, EPS, and ROE
etc. EVA based performance drive managers to employ firm’s assets more productively and it helps in reduction
of differences in the interests of the managers and shareholders (Irala, 2005). Biddle et al. (1998) concluded in
their study that firms that adopt residual income based incentives plans exhibit increased income. This study
supports that managers do respond to residual income based plans. Therefore, EVA and residual income could
prove effective in motivating managers for shareholder wealth creation but whether implementation of EVA and
residual income based incentives have been truly effective remain an open question for future research. “You
lose about 50% of the power of EVA if the incentive plan is not truly driven by it” (Stewart 1995). An effective
EVA compensation system requires a substantial commutation effort and extensive training for both managers
and their subordinates (Ferguson and Leistikow, 1998). Desai and Ferri (2006) in a case study discussed the
concept of EVA and its practical applications as a management control system for performance measurement.
From the analysis of literature reviewed, it appears that there is no reported study on EVA and managerial
performance particularly in developing countries. Therefore, research is needed to understand the basic issues
involved in such countries and their comparison of EVA with other developed economies.
6. Future Directions and Areas of research
As evident from the literature, EVA has been the topic of interest for researchers particularly in USA and few
other countries since 1994. Majority of the studies relate to EVA & stock returns and its comparison with
traditional measure of corporate performance. But there are many other important areas which need the attention
of research as presented in the following section.
6.1 Accounting Adjustments and EVA
GAAP related adjustments comprise the most unique and debatable aspect of EVA. Although, these adjustments
are argued to produce earnings figures that are closer to cash flows, they are often criticized for having little
importance and difficult to understand. Stern- Stewart has suggested 164 possible adjustments to arrive at
adjusted net operating profit after taxes for the calculation of EVA. There are still controversies among
academicians regarding GAAP related adjustments in EVA calculation. Removal of some accruals through these
adjustments is argued to reduce, rather than increase, the information content of EVA. There is a need to
harmonize some adjustments that are required to be incorporated in calculation of NOPAT. Another issue of

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research in EVA adjustments is to examine more closely which components of EVA and earnings contribute to,
or subtract from information content (Worthington & West, 2001).
6.2 Empirical evidences about developing countries
Empirical evidences available on EVA till date and as evident from Table VI & Figure 3 show that EVA related
information are readily available and promoted in the advanced economies like USA, Australia, Brazil, South
Africa that facilitate research on the concept contrary to the situation in emerging economies where no good
number of studies are published on EVA. This may be another area for future research that provides evidences
about the superiority of EVA in other countries particularly the developing ones.
6.3 Sector Specific studies
Studies conducted on EVA viz- a -viz traditional measures of corporate performance till date relate to different
sectors. These studies fail to provide clear evidences about which metric is more useful in explaining stock
returns and can be used as performance measure. Companies selected in these studies relate to various industries.
Analyzing sector specific companies by using EVA viz- a -viz traditional measures and comparing results can be
another area of research in order to provide sector specific evidences about the concept of EVA.
6.4 EVA Applications in other Industries
Most of the studies in EVA pertain to the manufacturing sector across the world. As value added is widely
recognized parameter of corporate success, it can be applied in various other areas like education, hospital and
tourism etc. Kim (2006) conducted a study and tested the hypothesis on hospitality sectors firms and compared
EVA with traditional measures where he found high association of returns of hospitality industry firms that to
with EVA. Geyser & Liebenberg (2003) examine introducing EVA as a performance measure for agribusinesses
and co-ops in South Africa. In future, researchers could explore how EVA be applied to other industries and
comparison of results made to validate the applicability of the concept.
7. Conclusion
EVA is now recognized as an important tool of performance measurement and management all over the world,
particularly in advance economies by adopting it as corporate strategy. Still there are mixed evidences about the
superiority of EVA over traditional performance measurement tools. Country specific evidences are also not
clear when compared with other residual income metrics. In this review paper, an attempt has been made to
review the literature on EVA. We have presented the literature classification scheme by categorizing the articles
in seven sub-streams of EVA, viz., EVA –MVA relationship (contenta), EVA and stock returns (contentb),
managerial behavior and performance management (contentc), concept, criticism, application and strategy
(contentd), value management (contente), discounting approaches (contentf) and literature survey (contentg);
whereas earlier researchers (Worthington & West,2001 and Pal & Sura,2007) had not categorized the literature
on these bases. It is encouraging to note that last 10 years, in particular 2000 to 2008, have seen a remarkable
increase in research on EVA. Empirical research methodology alone accounted for 71 percent among all four
methodologies (empirical, conceptual, descriptive and exploratory cross-sectional) From the analysis of studies,
it is felt that further research is needed on implementation issues, role of accounting adjustments, empirical
evidences in developed economies, EVA as a strategy, EVA and discounting techniques like NPV, IRR and
managerial performance measurement aspects of EVA. Empirical studies conducted till date on EVA had used
data for smaller period whereas there is scope for future research on the concept by considering the data
pertaining to longer durations in order to test the validity of the concept. Therefore efforts should be made in this
direction to further broaden the horizon of applicability of this useful concept.
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Yvonne, J. A. (2001). A Comparative Analysis of Value-Added and Traditional Measures of Performance: An

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Notes
Note 1. EVA is registered trademark of Stern Stewart & Company.
Note 2. MVA is acronym of Market Value Added, another popular measures used to analyse the firm
performance. Market Value Added (MVA) is the difference between the current market value of a firm and the
capital contributed by investors. If MVA is positive, the firm has added value. If it is negative, the firm has
destroyed value.
Note 3. The Residual Income (RI) based concept has been recognized by economists since the 18th century. RI is
calculated as follow: RIt= NOPATt- Kt × capital t-1, where NOPAT is net operating profit after tax, Kt is the
company’s cost of capital , and capital t-1 is the invested capital at the beginning of the year. DCF is a valuation
method used to estimate the attractiveness of an investment opportunity.
Note 4. NPV, Net Present Value is valuation method widely used in evaluating capital budgeting proposals. It is
the difference between the present value (PV) of the future cash flows from an investment and the amount of
investment. Present value of the expected cash flows is computed by discounting them at the required rate of
return (also called minimum rate of return)
Note 5. Discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis uses future free cash flow projections and discounts them (most
often using the weighted average cost of capital) to arrive at a present value, which is used to evaluate the
potential for investment. If the value arrived at through DCF analysis is higher than the current cost of the
investment, the opportunity may be a good one.
Note 6. The term earnings per share (EPS) represents the portion of a company's earnings, net of taxes and
preferred stock dividends, that is allocated to each share of common stock. The figure can be calculated simply
by dividing net income earned in a given reporting period (usually quarterly or annually) by the total number of
shares outstanding during the same term.
Note 7. Refined economic value added (REVA) provides an analytical framework for evaluating operating
performance measures in the context of shareholder value creation. REVA for a given period t is defined as
REVA = NOPATt - Kw(MVt-1), where NOPAT is the firm's NOPAT at the end of period t and MWt-1 is the total
market value of the firm's assets at the end of period t-1 (beginning of period t) . MVt-1 is given by the market
value of the firm's equity plus the book value of the firm's total debt less non-interest-bearing current liabilities,
all at the end of period t-1.

Table I. Comparison of different Traditional Performance Measures

Performance Measure Computation includes

Returns Capital employed(CE) Cost of CE
NOPAT YES NO NO
EPS YES YES NO
ROCE YES YES NO
ROE YES YES NO
(Source: Irala, L. R. (2005).

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Table II. Distribution of reviewed articles from various sources

Particulars Number of Papers
(A) Journal
Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) 24
Management Dynamics(MD) 01
Harvard Business Review(HBR) 01
International Journal of Managerial Finance 01
American Business Review ( ABR) 01
Journal of International Business & Economics 01
Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting 02
Journal of Managerial Issues(JMI) 02
Advances in Accounting 01
The Journal of Investing 02
Asian Review of Accounting(ARA) 01
Journal of Accounting and Economics 02
Journal of Applied Corporate Finance(JOACF) 03
Business and Economic Review(ER) 01
Management Accounting Research(MAR) 02
Financial Practice And Education 02
European Management Journal (EMJ) 01
Australian Journal of Management(AJM) 01
The Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance 02
Review of Economic Sciences(RES) 01
Journal of Applied Finance 04
Journal of Accounting Research 01
Journal of Economics & Business 01
Strategy & Leadership 02
Quarterly Journal of Finance and Accounting 01
European Financial Management 01
Management Decision 01
Managerial Finance 01
Russian And East European Finance & Trade 01
South African Journal of Economic And Management Sciences 01
The Engineering Economist 01
The Financier 01
The Icfai Journal of Accounting Research 02
The Icfai Journal of Applied Finance 01
The Management Accountant 01
Vidyasagar University Journal of Commerce 01
Vikalpa- Journal of Decision Makers 01
PES Business Review 01
Meditari Accountancy Research 01
Journal of the Academy of Business and Economics 01
Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research 01
Journal of Financial and Strategic Decisions 01
Journal of Global Economy 01
Indian Journal of Accounting & Finance 01
Icfai University Journal of Industrial Economics 01
Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management 01
Global Finance Journal 01
Financial Analysts Journal 01
Agribusiness 02
Agrekon 01

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Decision 01
Amity Journal of Business Strategy 01
China-USA Business Review 01
SAM Advance Management Journal 01
South Africa Journal of Business Management 01
Benchmarking 01
Canadian Social Science 01
Accountancy Ireland 01
Journal of Accounting 01
Total 87
(B) International Conference Papers 09
(C) Working Papers & Others* 06
Grand Total 112
*Others Includes Unpublished Thesis and Survey on EVA accessed from Internet.

Table III. Classification of Literature on EVA

S.no Researchers Year Content Methodology Contribution to Research
1 Keef & Roush 2003 Contenta Descriptive Theoretical relation between the series of abnormal returns and series of
economic profit is idiosyncratic to the choice of adjustments.
2 Lehn & Makhija 1996 Contenta Empirical EVA and MVA serve as signals for strategic change.
3 O’Byrne 1996 Contenta Empirical Focus on Link between theory and practice on EVA
4 Kramer & Pushner 1997 Contenta Empirical Empirically tests the relationship between EVA and market value added

5 Hall & Brummer 1999 Contenta Empirical Comparison of various performance measures with MVA
6 Banerjee 2000 Contenta Empirical Find the relevance of Stewart’s claim
7 Kramer & Pushner 2001 Contenta Empirical The marginal cost of using EVA as a proxy for MVA are not justified by
any marginal benefits
a
8 Velez-Pareja 2001 Content Empirical Different approaches to calculate EVA and MVA are compared with
NPV results.
9 Peixoto 2002 Contenta Empirical EVA does not have more information content than traditional
performance measures in explaining equity market value
10 Sparling & Turvey 2003 Contenta Empirical EVA as a tool for valuing investments.
1 Griffith 2004 Contenta Empirical EVA adopters outperform their peers and EVA is useful for forecasting
12 Lin & Zhilin 2004 Contenta Empirical Presented the integrated EVA performance measurement (IEPM) model
13 Ramana 2005 Contenta Empirical Evidences about EVA- MVA relationship of Indian companies

14 Wet De 2005 Contenta Empirical Stronger relationship between MVA and cash flow from operations
15 Zaima et al. 2005 Contenta Empirical Provides implications for corporate executives utilizing EVA to evaluate
performance linked to MVA
a
16 Kim 2006 Content Empirical Empirical analysis of EVA and MVA relationship in Hospitality Industry

17 Ghanbari & More 2007 Contenta Empirical Empirical evidences on Indian Automobile Industry
1 Irala 2007 Contenta Empirical Examines whether EVA has got a better predictive power relative to the
traditional accounting measures
a
19 Nagar 2007 Content Empirical EVA values do have an impact on MVA of the companies
20 Wet & Toit 2007 Contenta Empirical Impact of popular financial performance measures on shareholders’
wealth.
2 Forker & Powell 2008 Contenta Empirical Predictability and variability measures to investigate empirically the
relative quality of Stern Stewart’s measure of economic value added
(EVA) compared to other measures
22 Fountaine et al. 2008 Contenta Empirical EVA does provide economically useful information that can be used to
forecast portfolio separation
23 Gandhi & Rajib 2008 Contenta Empirical EVA can be used as strategy to achieve organizational objectives
24 Ismail 2008 Contenta Empirical Value creators have better earnings multiplier than value destroyers
a
25 Lefkowitz 1999 Content Exploratory Empirical analysis of firms and industry related to EVA

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S.no Researchers Year Content Methodology Contribution to Research

cross-
sectional
26 Martin et al. 2003 Contentb Conceptual Theoretical foundations of residual income as a tool for evaluating firm
performance
27 Dodd & Chen 1996 Contentb  Descriptive Management and stock holder interests would be aligned by adopting
EVA
2 Paulo 2002 Contentb  Descriptive Relevance of EVA and Accounting Information
29 Bacidore et al. 1997 Contentb  Empirical EVA performs quite well in terms of its correlation with shareholders
value creation, but REVA is theoretically superior
b
30 Biddle et al. 1997 Content   Empirical Earnings outperform EVA in explaining stock returns.
3 Chen & Dodd 1997 Contentb  Empirical Operating Income regressions show higher regressions than Residual
Income & EVA regressions
32 Chen & Dodd 1997 Contentb  Empirical Empirical evidences regarding superiority of EVA are provided
33 Biddle et al. 1998 Contentb  Empirical Managers do respond to EVA incentives
34 Brown & Pierce 2000 Contentb  Empirical UK dataset exhibits similar characteristics to empirical evidence in the
US
35 Erdogan et al. 2000 Contentb  Empirical Economic profit model and comparison with EVA
36 Farsio et al. 2000 Contentb  Empirical EVA is not a good indicator of stock performance. It explains only a
fraction of the variability inn stock returns fluctuations
37 Garvey & Milbourn 2000 Contentb  Empirical Empirically estimate the value-added" of EVA by firm and industry
3 Ho et al. 2000 Contentb  Empirical Internet companies and superiority of EVA
39 Cordeiro & Kent 2001 Contentb  Empirical No significant relationship between EVA adoption and stock market
performance
40 Jambulingam 2002 Contentb  Empirical Relative performance of Pharmaceutical companies from various
countries analyzed using EVA
4 Lovata & Costigan 2002 Contentb  Empirical Provide evidence as to the systematic differences between firms using
EVA and not using EVA
42 Machuga et al. 2002 Contentb  Empirical New approach to evaluating the relative performance of earnings
and EVA as measures of firm performance
43 Verma 2002 Contentb  Empirical Banks must always strive to maximize shareholders value without
which their stocks can never be fancied by the market
44 Biddle et al. 2003 Contentb  Empirical Independent evidences regarding EVA’s alleged advantages

45 Tian et al. 2003 Contentb  Empirical Negative EVA and the negative estimated EVA coefficient in Hong
Kong listed companies
b
46 Tortella & Brusco 2003 Content   Empirical Adoption of Economic Value Added (EVA®) management technique
has positive effects on various variables
47 Hall & Geyser 2004 Contentb  Empirical Explore that EVA provides additional information about wealth creation
and profitability than do the other ratios.
4 Worthington & West 2004 Contentb  Empirical Australian evidences suggests that EVA is significant in explaining
stock returns
49 Ferguson et al. 2005 Contentb  Empirical Event study methodology to empirically investigate EVA adopting and
non- adopting companies
50 Medeiros 2005 Contentb  Empirical The hypothesis that EVA affects stock returns is tested through linear
regression, using alternative models in Brazilian stock exchange
5 Misra & Kanwal 2005 Contentb  Empirical Empirical analysis of EVA and Stock returns in Indian Companies
52 Pandey 2005 Contentb  Empirical Empirically explores profitability and growth as drivers of shareholder
value
53 Dimitrios et al. 2006 Contentb  Empirical Stock returns are more closely associated with earnings per share than
with EVA
b
54 Ferguson 2006 Content   Empirical Event study on MVA – EVA relationship

55 Griffith 2006 Contentb  Empirical Investment decision and value based measurement
b
56 Ismail 2006 Content   Empirical UK empirical evidences regarding association of stock return between

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S.no Researchers Year Content Methodology Contribution to Research

EVA and other accounting measures
57 Issham et al. 2006 Contentb  Empirical Negative relationship between the size of the companies and the EVA
5 Maditinos et al. 2006 Contentb  Empirical Relative information content tests revealed that stock returns are more
closely associated with EPS than EVA
59 Palliam 2006 Contentb  Empirical EVA as a tool for valuing investments.

60 Wet & Hall 2006 Contentb  Empirical Highlights the importance of economic profits (EVA) and their long
term effects on MVA
6 Athanassakos 2007 Contentb  Empirical Companies with better stock market performance exhibited higher
likelihood of using EVA.
62 Nappi-Choulet et al. 2007 Contentb  Empirical Sales of real estate assets can be driven by value maximizing behavior

63 Kyriazis 2007 Contentb  Empirical Net Income and Net Operating Income appear to be more value relevant
& Anastassis than EVA.
64 Misra & Kanwal 2007 Contentb  Empirical EVA is the single most significant explanatory variable in explaining the
variation in the Market Value Added
65 Ramana 2007 Contentb  Empirical No strong evidences to support Stern Stewart’s claim in Indian
companies
66 Erasmus 2008 Contentb  Empirical Earnings have the strongest relationship with share returns
67 Taufik et al. 2008 Contentb  Empirical EVA is superior to ROE &ROA in Banks Stock Returns

6 Wong 1999 Contentb  Exploratory Majority of the companies do not achieve the objective of creating
cross-sectiona shareholder value
l
69 Goldberg 1999 Contentc Conceptual Benefits and questions of using EVA in performance measurement
c
70 Irala 2005 Content   Conceptual EVA helps in reduction of Agency Conflict
7 Anand et al. 1999 Contentc  Descriptive EVA as better tool for corporate performance measurement
72 Girotra &Yadav 2001 Contentc  Descriptive EVA encourages managers to think like owners and impel them to strive
for better performance
73 Irala & Reddy 2006 Contentc  Descriptive Corporate India is slowly catching up with few early adopters
74 Young 1997 Contentc  Empirical EVA implementation issues are discussed
75 Fogelberg & Griffith 2000 Contentc  Empirical Relation between ownership and performance of commercial banks is
not monotonic, but is significantly curvilinear
76 Evans & Evans 2002 Contentc  Empirical Cash based remuneration, was found to be unrelated to EVA
performance.
77 Fatemi et al. 2003 Contentc  Empirical Top managers in domestic- and globally focused firms are not only
incented to increase EVA, but also rewarded for past additions to MVA
7 Krauter et al. 2004 Contentc  Empirical Influence of profit-sharing /gain -sharing plans on the performance of
value Drivers
79 Austin 2005 Contentc  Empirical Analyze the adoption of economic value added (EVA) income as a
benchmark for setting pricing
80 Desai & Ferri 2006 Contentc  Empirical EVA and its practical applications as management control and
performance management tool.
c
8 Kumar & Pal 2008 Content   Exploratory Managers do not apply EVA for decision making
cross-sectiona
l
82 Mohanty 2006 Contentd Conceptual EVA is actually the excess free cash flow the company generates to
meet the expectations of the investors
83 Brewer et al. 1999 Contentd  Conceptual Explain uses and limitations of EVA for managers
84 Tham 2001 Contentd  Conceptual Major flaws about EVA
85 Anderson et al. 2005 Contentd  Conceptual EVA and role of adjustments
86 Phillips 2007 Contentd  Conceptual EVA sets high standards for measuring performance
87 Brabazon & 1998 Contentd  Descriptive Explain the difference between EVA and Residual Income using a
Sweeney worked example.

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S.no Researchers Year Content Methodology Contribution to Research

8 Stewart 1994 Contentd  Descriptive An attempt to correct some of the practical and theoretical
misconceptions surrounding EVA.
89 Villiers 1997 Contentd  Descriptive EVA cannot be used under inflation to estimate actual profitability
90 Weissenrieder 1997 Contentd  Descriptive Similarities and differences of the EVA and CVA
9 Ehrabar 1999 Contentd  Descriptive Company generates benefits implementing EVA if company makes it as
centerpiece of its financial management system.
92 Phani & 2000 Contentd  Descriptive Different value added metrics are analyzed
Bhattacharya
93 Keys et al. 2001 Contentd  Descriptive EVA is identical to residual income
94 Velez-Pareja 2001 Contentd  Descriptive Conceptual framework about EVA and NPV
d
95 Bhattacharya & 2004 Content   Descriptive EVA can be used for corporate reporting and internal governance
Phani
96 Ray & Choudhuri 2005 Contentd  Descriptive EVA alone can offer an organization a sustainable source of competitive
advantage is an overstatement
97 Cheremushkin 2008 Contentd  Descriptive Use accounting WACC embracing relevant adjustments made to the
Invested Capital charge calculating EVA
9 Stern et al. 1995 Contentd  Empirical A practical, and highly flexible, refinement of economists’ concept of
“residual income”
99 Dechow et al. 1999 Contentd  Empirical Assessment of various RI valuation models
10 Acheampong & 2001 Contentd  Empirical Value-added measures are not significantly different from traditional
Wetzstein measures of performance
d
10 Fernandez 2002 Content   Empirical Analyze the relationship between shareholders value creation and other
parameters
10 Liao and Feng 2005 Contentd  Empirical Analyses the advantages and disadvantages of EVA as evaluating
indicator
10 Rakshit 2006 Contentd  Empirical Analyze financial performance of Dabur India Ltd. using EVA
10 Weaver 2001 Contentd  Exploratory Identifies significant inconsistencies in the measurement of EVA and its
cross-sectiona major components
l
10 Malmi & Ikaheimo 2003 Contente Descriptive Application of VBM in organizations
10 Hall 2002 Contente  Empirical Address issues of shareholder value creation
10 Geyser & 2003 Contente  Empirical Value created by financial engineers is smaller and less significant than
Liebenberg the value created by good strategic marketing, production and personnel
decisions
f
10 Shrieves & 2001 Content Descriptive Evaluation of various DCF approaches of corporate valuation
Wachowicz
10 Velez-Pareja 2003 Contentf  Descriptive Consistency between DCF, RIM and EVA
and Tham
1 Dillon & Owers 1997 Contentf  Empirical Analytical investigation of the relationship between EVA and NPV
1 Worthington & West 2001 Contentg Empirical Review of Economic Value Added studies & direction for future
research
1 Pal & Sura 2007 Empirical Review of empirical literature on EVA and traditional performance
Contentg measures
Notes: - Contenta = EVA-MVA relationship; Contentb= EVA and stock returns; Contentc = Managerial behavior
& performance management; Contentd= EVA concept, criticism, applications and strategy; Contente= Value
management; Contentf= Discounting approaches; Contentg = Literature survey

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Table-IV. Break -up of the literature on EVA

Focus on Number of papers
Empirical evidences on EVA, Stock Return & firm performance 58

EVA and market value added (MVA) Relationship 25

Value based management 4

EVA concept, limitations 12
EVA and discounting techniques 3
EVA and managerial performance 8
Literature survey 2
Total 112
Source: Table III

Table-V. Distribution of various methodologies used in studies under review

Methodology Number of papers Percentage
Empirical 80 71
Descriptive 20 18
Conceptual 8 7
Exploratory cross -sectional 4 4
Total 112 100
Source: Table III

Table-VI. Year -wise break up of studies on EVA

S.no Year No of studies
1. 1994 1
2. 1995 1
3. 1996 3
4. 1997 9
5. 1998 2
6. 1999 8
7. 2000 8
8. 2001 11
9. 2002 9
10. 2003 10
11. 2004 6
12. 2005 12
13. 2006 13
14. 2007 11
15. 2008 8
Total 112
(Source- Authors’ calculations based on studies given in Table III)

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Table –VII. Country-wise publication of studies on EVA

S.no Country No of Studies Conducted
1 USA 51
2 India 21
3 South Africa 08
4 Australia 05
5 UK 02
China 02
6 Others* 23
*Other includes Malaysia, Canada, Brazil, Greece, Russia, New Zealand, Kuwait, Turkey and Indonesia etc.

Figure 1. Classification of EVA Literature

Figure 2. Methodologies used in the studies under review

14
Number of Publications

12
10
8
6
4
2
0
94

95

96

97

98

99

00

01

02

03

04

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06

07

08
19

19

19

19

19

19

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

Year

Figure 3.Year- wise publication of studies on EVA

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Figure 4. Country- wise publication of studies on EVA

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