JOURNAL OF APPLIED BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS
Financial Distress Models: How Pertinent Are Sampling Bias Criticisms?
Author(s): Robert F. Hodgin, Roberto Marchesini
Citation: Robert F. Hodgin, Roberto Marchesini, (2011) "Financial Distress Models: How Pertinent Are Sampling Bias Criticisms?," Journal of Applied Business and Economics, Vol. 12, Iss. 4, pp. 29 - 35
Article Type: Research paper
Publisher: North American Business Press
Abstract:
The finance literature shows that over-sampling of distressed companies, time-period selection, crossindustry
variation and choice of distress indicator can bias estimating model predictive accuracy. We
address those arguments using a sample of high-leverage companies where loan default is the indicator
variable. We separately test the predictive accuracy of two published multivariate financial distress
models by Zmijewski and Marchesini. The predictive accuracy for both models was generally comparable
for the new dataset. Further, each model’s predictive accuracy was comparable to that found in their
respective original datasets. These comparative results raise doubt regarding the relative importance of
sample bias criticisms.