Analysis and forecasting models for default risk. A survey of applied methodologies

During the last three decades various models have been proposed by the literature to predict the risk of bankruptcy and of firm insolvency, which make use of structural and empirical tools, namely rating system, credit scoring, option pricing and three alternative methods (fuzzy logic, efficient frontier and a forward looking model).In the present paper we focus on experting systems of neural networks, by taking into account theoretical as well as empirical literature on the topic.Adding to this literature, a set of alternative indicators is proposed that can be used in addition to traditional financial ratios.