Diseño de un modelo específico para la predicción de la quiebra de micro-entities

The importance of micro-entities due to their generation of employment and propelling economic activity, together with the fact of their particularities, implies the need to design appropriate methods that anticipate their bankruptcies. For that purpose, a hybrid model by combining parametric and nonparametric approaches is developed in this paper. First, the variables with the highest predictive power to detect bankruptcy are selected using logistic regression (LR). Subsequently, a non-parametric method, namely regression trees and classification (CART), is then applied to companies classified as "bankruptcy" or "non-bankruptcy". Our results show that this model provides a better result than when it is implemented in isolation, which joins its easier interpretation and faster convergence. Moreover, we demonstrate that the introduction of non-financial and macroeconomic variables complement the financial ratios for bankruptcy prediction. Findings are based on a data set of micro-entities (MEs), as recently defined by the European Union.