The two-parameter distribution known as exponential-Poisson (EP)
distribution, which has decreasing failure rate, was introduced by Kus (2007).
In this paper we generalize the EP distribution and show that the failure rate
of the new distribution can be decreasing or increasing. The failure rate can
also be upside-down bathtub shaped. A comprehensive mathematical treatment of
the new distribution is provided. We provide closed-form expressions for the
density, cumulative distribution, survival and failure rate functions; we also
obtain the density of the ith order statistic. We derive the rth raw moment
of the new distribution and also the moments of order statistics. Moreover, we
discuss estimation by maximum likelihood and obtain an expression for Fisher's
information matrix. Furthermore, expressions for the R\'enyi and Shannon
entropies are given and estimation of the stress-strength parameter is
discussed. Applications using two real data sets are presented