The Journal of Finance
After the initial groups are defined and firms selected, balance sheet and
income statement data are collected. Because of the large number of variables
found to be significant indicators of corporate problems in past studies, a list
of twenty-two potentially helpful variables (ratios) is compiled for evaluation.
The variables are classified into five standard ratio categories, including liquidity,
profitability, leverage, solvency, and activity ratios. The ratios are chosen
on the basis of their 1) popularity in the literature,^*' 2) potential relevancy to
the study, and a few "new" ratios initiated in this paper.
From tibe original list of variables, five variables are selected as doing the
best overall job together in the prediction of corporate bankruptcy.^^ In order
to arrive at a final profile of variables the following procedures are utilized:
(1) Observation of the statistical significance of various alternative functions
including determination of the relative contributions of each independent variable;
(2) evaluation of inter-correlations between the relevant variables; (3)
observation of the predictive accuracy of the various profiles; and (4) judgment
of the analyst.
The variable profile finally established did not contain the most significant
variables, amongst the twenty-two original ones, measured independently. This
would not necessarily improve upon the univariate, traditional analysis described
earlier. The contribution of the entire profile is evaluated, and since
this process is essentially iterative, there is no claim regarding the optimality
of the resulting discriminant function. The function, however, does the best job
among the alternatives which include numerous computer runs analyzing different
ratio-profiles. The final discriminant function is as follows:
(I) Z = .012X1 + .014X2 + .033X3 -f .OO6X4 -f .999X5
where Xi ^ Working capital/Total assets
X2 = Retained Earnings/Total assets
X3 = Earnings before interest and taxes/Total assets
X4 = Market value equity/Book value of total debt
X5 = Sales/Total assets
Z = Overall Index