Nadine Levratto and Bernard Paranque
This paper aims to highlight a typology of small firms which, beyond the criteria of size or industrial field, makes it possible to distinguish the quality of firms according to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to highlight a typology of small firms which, beyond the criteria of size or industrial field, makes it possible to distinguish the quality of firms according to their internal organisation and the type of market on which they act with the objective of reducing the capital gap and credit rationing.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a global approach using qualitative and quantitative data.
Findings
Still at the experimental stage, this method of assessing the ability of small firms to access financing from their various external partners could, if widely used, offer a means of increasing the transparency of small businesses and thereby enhancing their positioning and their chances of survival.
Research limitations/implications
The research is at an early stage and needs to be validated empirically.
Originality/value
While this paper describes a method of assessing an economic policy intended to benefit SMEs in France, its main purpose is to show how such a tool can help to target assistance and financing for small businesses more effectively.
Details
Keywords
Marianna Succurro, Giuseppe Arcuri and Giuseppina Damiana Costanzo
Starting from a series of financial ratios analysis, this paper aims to build up two indices which take into account both the firm’s debt level and its sustainability to…
Abstract
Purpose
Starting from a series of financial ratios analysis, this paper aims to build up two indices which take into account both the firm’s debt level and its sustainability to investigate if and to what extent the proposed indices are able to correctly predict firms’ financial bankruptcy probabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
The research implements a statistical approach (tandem analysis) based on both an original use of principal component analysis (PCA) and logit model.
Findings
The econometric results are compared with those of the popular Altman Z-score for different lengths of the reference period and with more recent classifiers. The empirical evidence would suggest a good performance of the proposed indices which, therefore, could be used as early warning signals of bankruptcy.
Practical implications
The potential application of the model is in the spirit of predicting bankruptcy and aiding companies’ evaluation with respect to going-concern considerations, among others, as the early detection of financial distress facilitates the use of rehabilitation measures.
Originality/value
The construction of the indebtedness indices is based on an original use of Robust PCA for skewed data.