Abstract

This study aims to verify the potential of combining prior payment behavior variables and financial ratios for SE default prediction modelling. Logistic regression was applied to a sample of 980 Italian SEs in order to calculate and compare two categories of default prediction models, one exclusively based on financial ratios and the other based also on company payment behavior related variables. The main findings are: 1) using prior payment behavior variables significantly improves the effectiveness of SE default prediction modelling; ii) the longer the forecast horizon and/or the smaller the size of the firms which are the object of analysis, the higher  the improvements in prediction accuracy that can be obtained by using also prior payment behavior variables as default predictors; iii) SE default prediction modelling should be separately implemented for different size groups of firms.

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