Financial Statement Analysis and the Prediction of Financial Distress

Financial Statement Analysis and the Prediction of Financial Distress discusses the evolution of three main streams within the financial distress prediction literature: the set of dependent and explanatory variables used, the statistical methods of estimation, and the modeling of financial distress. Section 1 discusses concepts of financial distress. Section 2 discusses theories regarding the use of financial ratios as predictors of financial distress. Section 3 contains a brief review of the literature. Section 4 discusses the use of market price-based models of financial distress. Section 5 develops the statistical methods for empirical estimation of the probability of financial distress. Section 6 discusses the major empirical findings with respect to prediction of financial distress. Section 7 briefly summarizes some of the more relevant literature with respect to bond ratings. Section 8 presents some suggestions for future research and Section 9 presents concluding remarks.