We examine how equity-market frictions that restrict pessimistic trading, such as short-sale constraints, affect assessments of default risk. We find that these frictions decrease the usefulness of equity-market variables for identifying defaulting firms but increase their usefulness for...

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the choice of cut-off points, sampling procedures, and the business cycle on the accuracy of bankruptcy prediction models. Misclassification can result in erroneous predictions leading to prohibitive costs to firms, investors and the economy....

Financial institutions and academic researchers utilize bankruptcy prediction models to assess distress risk. However, predicting default can be problematic since (i) few firms actually experience default in any one year, (ii) the lag between practical and actual default can vary significantly,...

We develop a model to predict bankruptcies, exploiting that negative book equity is a strong indicator of financial distress. Accordingly, our key predictor of bankruptcy is the probability that future losses will deplete a firm's book equity. To calculate this probability, we use earnings...

This study proposes a simple theoretical framework that allows for assessing financial distress up to five years in advance. We jointly model financial distress by using two of its key driving factors: declining cash-generating ability and insufficient liquidity reserves. The model is based on...

This paper proposes a simple technical approach for the analytical derivation of Point-in-Time PD (probability of default) forecasts, with minimal data requirements. The inputs required are the current and future Through-the-Cycle PDs of the obligors, their last known default rates, and a...

We investigate the role of expected accounting losses in bankruptcy prediction. To form expectations, we estimate firm-specific expected profitability distributions following Chang et al. (2021). We find that i) an expected loss dummy, ii) the expected probability to realize future losses, and...

In this paper, we test alternative feature selection methods for bankruptcy prediction and illustrate their superiority versus popular models used in the literature. We test these methods using a comprehensive dataset of more than one million financial statements from privately held Norwegian...

Many studies have shown that avoiding political costs is an incentive for firms to manipulate accounting information, e.g., McNichols and Wilson, 1988; Jones, 1991; Kato et al., 2001. The majority of them use discretionary accruals models as proxies to manipulation. This paper introduces a new variable...

Prior research and recent anecdotes during the financial crisis demonstrate that lack of creditor coordination can exacerbate distress thereby illustrating the economic importance of creditor coordination effects. This study develops and incorporates empirical ex ante measures, or predictors, of...