BIR stands for what?

• A. Benefit / Costs
• B. Benefit / Investment
• C. Cost / Benefit
• D. Investment / Benefit

Answer: (B)

BIR is the measure of benefits relative to the investment required. It answers how much benefit you get for every unit of resources invested. Because of that, the best expansion is Benefit / Investment. A higher ratio means more benefit per dollar (or per unit of investment), and a value above 1 indicates benefits exceed the invested resources.

For example, if a project yields $2 million in benefits and requires $1 million in investment, the BIR is 2.0, meaning $2 of benefit per $1 invested. If benefits are $600k and investment is $1 million, the BIR is 0.6, indicating less than full payoff.

The other phrasing would describe different metrics or invert the relationship (for instance, Benefit/Costs or Cost/Benefit), but they do not match the standard meaning of BIR.