Description: This is an abstract of the paper entitled 'Axioms for the Valuation of Payment Streams: A Topological Vector Space Approach' by Approach by S. David Promislow. From Actuarial Research Clearing House, 1994, Vol. 1

Description: Given a financial transaction we are often interested in the number of internal rates of return [yield rates] and their location. From an actuarial point of view, the fundamental question is to identify those transactions with a single yield rate, or a single rate in some interval such as the positive reals. In this paper we are concerned with this counting problem. We survey various results concerning this problem, and provide a unifying approach together with some new insights.

Description: This paper arose from an investigation into the concept of yield rate. The paper first outlines the difficulties involved in comparing financial transactions strictly on the basis of yield it then develops an approach that does not depend on yield rates. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1980, Vol. 32.