Within a framework of debt renegotiation and a priori private information, what is the role of outside and inside collateral? The literature shows that unobservability of the project’s returns implies that the high-risk borrower is more inclined to pledge outside collateral than is the...

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...

In the era of Basel II a powerful tool for bankruptcy prognosis is vital for banks. The tool must be precise but also easily adaptable to the bank's objections regarding the relation of false acceptances (Type I error) and false rejections (Type II error). We explore the suitability of Smooth...