Credit ratings are commonly used by lenders to assess the default risk, because every credit is connected with a possible loss. If the probability of a default is above a certain threshold, a credit will not be provided. The purpose of this paper is to test whether credit ratings contribute...

Small businesses, the majority of Spanish firms, rarely file for formal bankruptcy when dealing with financial distress. This is why business bankruptcy rates in Spain are among the lowest in the world, even during the current economic crisis. To explain this fact we present the following...

This article shows the prediction of the level of insolvency in companies that are not listed on the stock exchange belonging to the health sector for one and two years in advance, using the multiple logistic regression analysis based on indicators of liquidity, indebtedness, financial structure...

Economic theory conjectures complementarities between the ranking of creditors in formal insolvency proceedings and the use of collateral in bank loan contracts as well as the existence of relational compared to arm's length lending. In this paper we seek evidence for these hypotheses taking...

This paper proposes a rating methodology that is based on a non-linear classification method, the support vector machine, and a non-parametric technique for mapping rating scores into probabilities of default. We give an introduction to underlying statistical models and represent the results of...

Eine große Herausforderung der multivariablen Analyse mit bilanziellen Kennzahlen besteht in der Identifikation derjenigen Kennzahlen, die zur besten Modellperformance führen und dabei möglichst leicht interpretierbar und intuitiv bleiben. Die Menge der in Frage kommenden Kennzahlen ist in...

Empirical evidence suggests that banks often engage in refinancing of intrinsically insolvent debtors instead of writing of their non-performing loans. Such forbearance lending may induce soft budget constraints for the debtors, as it diminishes their incentives to thwart default. This paper...

This paper examines the negative externalities that may occur when a large bank fails, describes the nature of those externalities, and explores whether they may be greater in a case involving a large cross-border banking organization. The analysis suggests that the chief negative externalities...

This article presents a financial scoring model estimated on Czech corporate accounting data. Seven financial indicators capable of explaining business failure at a 1-year prediction horizon are identified. Using the model estimated in this way, an aggregate indicator of the creditworthiness of...

This paper studies the relation between macroeconomic fluctuations and corporate defaults while conditioning on industry affiliation and an extensive set of firm-specific factors. Using a logit approach on a panel data set for all incorporated Swedish businesses over 1990-2002, we find strong...