EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Performance of default-risk measures: the sample matters

Isabel Abinzano, Ana Gonzalez-Urteaga, Luis Muga and Santiago Sanchez

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2020, vol. 120, issue C

Abstract: This paper examines the predictive power of the main default-risk measures used by both academics and practitioners, including accounting measures, market-price-based measures and the credit rating. Given that some measures are unavailable for some firm types, pair wise comparisons are made between the various measures, using same-size samples in every case. The results show the superiority of market-based measures, although their accuracy depends on the prediction horizon and the type of default events considered. Furthermore, examination shows that the effect of within-sample firm characteristics varies across measures. The overall finding is of poorer goodness of fit for accurate default prediction in samples characterised by high book-to-market ratios and/or high asset intangibility, both of which suggest pricing difficulty. In the case of large-firm samples, goodness of fit is in general negatively related to size, possibly because of the “too-big-to-fail” effect.

Keywords: Credit-risk measures; Default prediction; Hard to value stocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 G33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426620302211
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:120:y:2020:i:c:s0378426620302211

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2020.105959

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:120:y:2020:i:c:s0378426620302211