Article ID: | iaor200964597 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 11 |
Issue: | 12 |
Start Page Number: | 1 |
End Page Number: | 19 |
Publication Date: | Dec 2009 |
Journal: | International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management |
Authors: | Zopounidis Constantin, Pasiouras Fotios, Tzanetoulakos Alexander |
Keywords: | decision theory: multiple criteria, manufacturing industries |
Small firms play an important role in most modern economies. Nevertheless, they are not without their problems. Therefore, the development of business failure prediction models for small firms is quite important. In the present study we employ three multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) techniques for the development of failure prediction models for small UK firms. The MCDA models are developed using a ten‐fold cross validation and benchmarked against models developed with discriminant analysis and logit analysis. All models achieve satisfactory classification accuracies while including only a small number of input variables, hence avoiding the commonly encountered problem of data availability when dealing with small firms. Also we examine two non‐financial variables – the age of the firm and auditors' opinion – but the classification results are only marginally affected.