Abstract-This paper aims to create bankruptcy prediction models using logistic regression and neural networks based on the data of Estonian manufacturing firms. The models are composed and tested on the whole population data of bankrupt firms and their vital counterparts for years [2005][2006][2007][2008]. Composed models are also tested on the data of firms from economic recession years of 2009-2010. The results indicate that models based on different methods have similar predictive abilities, yet two and three years before bankruptcy they are not as good as for one year before bankruptcy. Also, the models do not perform as well when using data from economic recession years.Index Terms-Bankruptcy prediction, manufacturing firms.
I. INTRODUCTIONSince 1960ies the failure prediction domain in literature has flourished. The main idea of failure prediction studies is to establish decision rules based on a set of variables (commonly financial ratios), which would facilitate to discriminate vital and failing firms. During past decades many literature reviews (e.g. [1]- [6]) have appeared, which list a myriad of different prediction studies and the amount of relevant research seems to be quickly increasing. The innovativeness of emerging studies mostly lies in novel statistical techniques, leaving other possibilities to contribute to literature in the background.Still, for increasing the validity of a prediction model, more attention should be directed to the data applied. Therefore, this paper does not aim to make a contribution by elaborating a new statistical technique for failure prediction, but instead addresses to major limitations concerning the data used in prediction model composition. The objective of the paper is to compose bankruptcy prediction models by using one classical and one modern statistical technique, at the same time addressing a set of known data limitations. The novelty of the paper rises from the objective, namely an elaborate dataset will allow addressing multitude of limitations that are rarely viewed together in available empirical studies. As a classical technique, logistic regression, and as a modern technique, neural networks will be applied in empirical analysis. Because of that, literature review is mostly focused on given two methods and less attention is directed to others.The paper is structured as follows. The introductory part is followed by a short review of literature, which specifically focuses on two methods chosen to model failure in current study and in addition addresses some of the general features of bankruptcy prediction models. The following empirical Manuscript received July 20, 2013; revised October 15, 2013. Oliver Lukason and Martin Grünberg are with the Tartu University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Narva road 4, Tartu 51009, Estonia (e-mail: oliver.lukason@ut.ee).analysis is broken into two parts, of which the first addresses data and methodology, whereas the second outlines results of statistical analysis with relevant comments and discussion...