4.2. Factors that influence the aggregate default prediction accuracy
We now test whether and how firm characteristics (H2) and
firm-credit bureau characteristics (H3) influence the improvement
in aggregate default prediction accuracy. For this purpose, we split
the firms in our sample into terciles based on the following characteristics:
LIMITED_LIABILTY (binary split), AGE, SALES, DISTANCE,
and FIRMS_PER_EMPLOYEE. We then enter the firm’s characteristics
in the baseline and full model and calculate for each tercile
sample the difference in the accuracy ratios. Note that we do not
recalibrate the baseline and full model on the tercile samples since
Creditreform calibrates its model on the full database and not on
subsamples. Table 3 reports the results.
90: sewage and waste disposal; code 95: private households),
and they exhibit already a relatively high baseline AR. In sum, we
show that the influence of business credit information on the default
prediction accuracy varies substantially across industries.
This finding is novel since previous studies have either focused
on a cross-country perspective or samples of firms from single
industries.