The Impact of Recession on the Prediction of Corporate Failure

In this paper, we hypothesize that recessionary business cycles can contribute to corporate failure. Specifically, we test for a relationship between failure and (1) knowledge that failure occurred during a recession and (2) knowledge that the predictor variables were measured during a recession. We are able to show that accounting-based logistic regression models used to predict corporate failure are sensitive to the occurrence of a recession. Furthermore, our results indicate that such models are sensitive to knowledge that the predictor variables were generated during a recession and to knowledge that failure ultimately occurred during a recession. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998.