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...

In many economic applications it is desirable to make future predictions about the financial status of a company. The focus of predictions is mainly if a company will default or not. A support vector machine (SVM) is one learning method which uses historical data to establish a classification...

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...