It is obvious that the accuracy of the model falls off consistently with the
one exception of the fourth and fifth years, when the results are reversed from
what would be expected. The most logical reason for this occurrence is that
after the second year, the discriminant model becomes unreliable in its predictive
ability, and, also, that the change from year to year has little or no
meaning.
Implications. Based on the above results it is suggested that the bankruptcy
prediction model is an accurate forecaster of failure up to two years prior to
bankruptcy and that the accuracy diminishes substantially as the lead time
increases. In order to investigate the possible reasons underlying these findings
the trend in the five predictive variables is traced on a univariate basis for five
years preceding bankruptcy. The ratios of four other important but less significant
ratios are also listed in Table 5.
The two most important conclusions of this trend analysis are (1) that all
of the observed ratios show a deteriorating trend as bankruptcy approached.