• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.109-116
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• 2001

The detection of corporate failures is a subject that has been particularly amenable to cross-sectional financial ratio analysis. In most of firms, however, the financial data are available over past years. Because of this, a model utilizing these longitudinal data could provide useful information on the prediction of bankruptcy. To correctly reflect the longitudinal and firm-specific data, the generalized linear model with assuming the first order AR(autoregressive) process is proposed. The method is motivated by the clinical research that several characteristics are measured repeatedly from individual over the time. The model is compared with several other predictive models to evaluate the performance. By using the financial data from manufacturing corporations in the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) list, we will discuss some experiences learned from the procedure of sampling scheme, variable transformation, imputation, variable selection, and model evaluation. Finally, implications of the model with repeated measurement and future direction of research will be discussed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.139-157
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• 2016

Bankruptcy involves considerable costs, so it can have significant effects on a country's economy. Thus, bankruptcy prediction is an important issue. Over the past several decades, many researchers have addressed topics associated with bankruptcy prediction. Early research on bankruptcy prediction employed conventional statistical methods such as univariate analysis, discriminant analysis, multiple regression, and logistic regression. Later on, many studies began utilizing artificial intelligence techniques such as inductive learning, neural networks, and case-based reasoning. Currently, ensemble models are being utilized to enhance the accuracy of bankruptcy prediction. Ensemble classification involves combining multiple classifiers to obtain more accurate predictions than those obtained using individual models. Ensemble learning techniques are known to be very useful for improving the generalization ability of the classifier. Base classifiers in the ensemble must be as accurate and diverse as possible in order to enhance the generalization ability of an ensemble model. Commonly used methods for constructing ensemble classifiers include bagging, boosting, and random subspace. The random subspace method selects a random feature subset for each classifier from the original feature space to diversify the base classifiers of an ensemble. Each ensemble member is trained by a randomly chosen feature subspace from the original feature set, and predictions from each ensemble member are combined by an aggregation method. The k-nearest neighbors (KNN) classifier is robust with respect to variations in the dataset but is very sensitive to changes in the feature space. For this reason, KNN is a good classifier for the random subspace method. The KNN random subspace ensemble model has been shown to be very effective for improving an individual KNN model. The k parameter of KNN base classifiers and selected feature subsets for base classifiers play an important role in determining the performance of the KNN ensemble model. However, few studies have focused on optimizing the k parameter and feature subsets of base classifiers in the ensemble. This study proposed a new ensemble method that improves upon the performance KNN ensemble model by optimizing both k parameters and feature subsets of base classifiers. A genetic algorithm was used to optimize the KNN ensemble model and improve the prediction accuracy of the ensemble model. The proposed model was applied to a bankruptcy prediction problem by using a real dataset from Korean companies. The research data included 1800 externally non-audited firms that filed for bankruptcy (900 cases) or non-bankruptcy (900 cases). Initially, the dataset consisted of 134 financial ratios. Prior to the experiments, 75 financial ratios were selected based on an independent sample t-test of each financial ratio as an input variable and bankruptcy or non-bankruptcy as an output variable. Of these, 24 financial ratios were selected by using a logistic regression backward feature selection method. The complete dataset was separated into two parts: training and validation. The training dataset was further divided into two portions: one for the training model and the other to avoid overfitting. The prediction accuracy against this dataset was used to determine the fitness value in order to avoid overfitting. The validation dataset was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the final model. A 10-fold cross-validation was implemented to compare the performances of the proposed model and other models. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, the classification accuracy of the proposed model was compared with that of other models. The Q-statistic values and average classification accuracies of base classifiers were investigated. The experimental results showed that the proposed model outperformed other models, such as the single model and random subspace ensemble model.

• 한국경영정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.608-613
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• 2007

Prediction of corporate bankruptcies has long been an important topic and has been studied extensively in the finance and management literature because it is an essential basis for the risk management of financial institutions. Recently, support vector machines (SVMs) are becoming popular as a tool for bankruptcy prediction because they use a risk function consisting of the empirical error and a regularized term which is derived from the structural risk minimization principle. In addition, they don't require huge training samples and have little possibility of overfitting. However. in order to Use SVM, a user should determine several factors such as the parameters ofa kernel function, appropriate feature subset, and proper instance subset by heuristics, which hinders accurate prediction results when using SVM In this study, we propose a novel hybrid SVM classifier with simultaneous optimization of feature subsets, instance subsets, and kernel parameters. This study introduces genetic algorithms (GAs) to optimize the feature selection, instance selection, and kernel parameters simultaneously. Our study applies the proposed model to the real-world case for bankruptcy prediction. Experimental results show that the prediction accuracy of conventional SVM may be improved significantly by using our model.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.872-875
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• 2009

In a bankruptcy prediction model, the accuracy is one of crucial performance measures due to its significant economic impacts. Ensemble is one of widely used methods for improving the performance of classification and prediction models. Two popular ensemble methods, Bagging and Boosting, have been applied with great success to various machine learning problems using mostly decision trees as base classifiers. In this paper, we analyze the performance of boosted neural networks for improving the performance of traditional neural networks on bankruptcy prediction tasks. Experimental results on Korean firms indicated that the boosted neural networks showed the improved performance over traditional neural networks.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.121-139
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• 2014

Predicting corporate failure has been an important topic in accounting and finance. The costs associated with bankruptcy are high, so the accuracy of bankruptcy prediction is greatly important for financial institutions. Lots of researchers have dealt with the topic associated with bankruptcy prediction in the past three decades. The current research attempts to use ensemble models for improving the performance of bankruptcy prediction. Ensemble classification is to combine individually trained classifiers in order to gain more accurate prediction than individual models. Ensemble techniques are shown to be very useful for improving the generalization ability of the classifier. Bagging is the most commonly used methods for constructing ensemble classifiers. In bagging, the different training data subsets are randomly drawn with replacement from the original training dataset. Base classifiers are trained on the different bootstrap samples. Instance selection is to select critical instances while deleting and removing irrelevant and harmful instances from the original set. Instance selection and bagging are quite well known in data mining. However, few studies have dealt with the integration of instance selection and bagging. This study proposes an improved bagging ensemble based on instance selection using genetic algorithms (GA) for improving the performance of SVM. GA is an efficient optimization procedure based on the theory of natural selection and evolution. GA uses the idea of survival of the fittest by progressively accepting better solutions to the problems. GA searches by maintaining a population of solutions from which better solutions are created rather than making incremental changes to a single solution to the problem. The initial solution population is generated randomly and evolves into the next generation by genetic operators such as selection, crossover and mutation. The solutions coded by strings are evaluated by the fitness function. The proposed model consists of two phases: GA based Instance Selection and Instance based Bagging. In the first phase, GA is used to select optimal instance subset that is used as input data of bagging model. In this study, the chromosome is encoded as a form of binary string for the instance subset. In this phase, the population size was set to 100 while maximum number of generations was set to 150. We set the crossover rate and mutation rate to 0.7 and 0.1 respectively. We used the prediction accuracy of model as the fitness function of GA. SVM model is trained on training data set using the selected instance subset. The prediction accuracy of SVM model over test data set is used as fitness value in order to avoid overfitting. In the second phase, we used the optimal instance subset selected in the first phase as input data of bagging model. We used SVM model as base classifier for bagging ensemble. The majority voting scheme was used as a combining method in this study. This study applies the proposed model to the bankruptcy prediction problem using a real data set from Korean companies. The research data used in this study contains 1832 externally non-audited firms which filed for bankruptcy (916 cases) and non-bankruptcy (916 cases). Financial ratios categorized as stability, profitability, growth, activity and cash flow were investigated through literature review and basic statistical methods and we selected 8 financial ratios as the final input variables. We separated the whole data into three subsets as training, test and validation data set. In this study, we compared the proposed model with several comparative models including the simple individual SVM model, the simple bagging model and the instance selection based SVM model. The McNemar tests were used to examine whether the proposed model significantly outperforms the other models. The experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the other models.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.65-76
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• 2022

Recently, not only traditional statistical techniques but also machine learning algorithms have been used to make more accurate bankruptcy predictions. But the insolvency rate of companies dealing with financial institutions is very low, resulting in a data imbalance problem. In particular, since data imbalance negatively affects the performance of artificial intelligence models, it is necessary to first perform the data imbalance process. In additional, as artificial intelligence algorithms are advanced for precise decision-making, regulatory pressure related to securing transparency of Artificial Intelligence models is gradually increasing, such as mandating the installation of explanation functions for Artificial Intelligence models. Therefore, this study aims to present guidelines for eXplainable Artificial Intelligence-based corporate bankruptcy prediction methodology applying SMOTE techniques and LIME algorithms to solve a data imbalance problem and model transparency problem in predicting corporate bankruptcy. The implications of this study are as follows. First, it was confirmed that SMOTE can effectively solve the data imbalance issue, a problem that can be easily overlooked in predicting corporate bankruptcy. Second, through the LIME algorithm, the basis for predicting bankruptcy of the machine learning model was visualized, and derive improvement priorities of financial variables that increase the possibility of bankruptcy of companies. Third, the scope of application of the algorithm in future research was expanded by confirming the possibility of using SMOTE and LIME through case application.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2008

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new binary classification method for predicting corporate failure based on genetic algorithm, and to validate its prediction power through empirical analysis. Establishing virtual companies representing bankrupt companies and non-bankrupt ones respectively, the proposed method measures the similarity between the virtual companies and the subject for prediction, and classifies the subject into either bankrupt or non-bankrupt one. The values of the classification variables of the virtual companies and the weights of the variables are determined by the proper model to maximize the hit ratio of training data set using genetic algorithm. In order to test the validity of the proposed method, we compare its prediction accuracy with ones of other existing methods such as multi-discriminant analysis, logistic regression, decision tree, and artificial neural network, and it is shown that the binary classification method we propose in this paper can serve as a premising alternative to the existing methods for bankruptcy prediction.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.83-93
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• 2001

Prediction of corporate failure using past financial data is well-documented topic. Early studies of bankruptcy prediction used statistical techniques such as multiple discriminant analysis, logit and probit. Recently, however, numerous studies have demonstrated that artificial intelligence such as neural networks (NNs) can be an alternative methodology for classification problems to which traditional statistical methods have long been applied. Although numerous theoretical and experimental studies reported the usefulness or neural networks in classification studies, there exists a major drawback in building and using the model. That is, the user can not readily comprehend the final rules that the neural network models acquire. We propose a genetic algorithms (GAs) approach in this study and illustrate how GAs can be applied to corporate failure prediction modeling. An advantage of GAs approach offers is that it is capable of extracting rules that are easy to understand for users like expert systems. The preliminary results show that rule extraction approach using GAs for bankruptcy prediction modeling is promising.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.228-233
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• 2021

In this study, we analyze the credit information (loan, delinquency information, etc.) of individual business owners to generate voluminous training data to establish a bankruptcy prediction model through a partial synthetic training technique. Furthermore, we evaluate the prediction performance of the newly generated data compared to the actual data. When using conditional tabular generative adversarial networks (CTGAN)-based training data generated by the experimental results (a logistic regression task), the recall is improved by 1.75 times compared to that obtained using the actual data. The probability that both the actual and generated data are sampled over an identical distribution is verified to be much higher than 80%. Providing artificial intelligence training data through data synthesis in the fields of credit rating and default risk prediction of individual businesses, which have not been relatively active in research, promotes further in-depth research efforts focused on utilizing such methods.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.1113-1125
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• 2013

Corporate bankruptcy prediction has been an important topic in the accounting and finance field for a long time. Several data mining techniques have been used for bankruptcy prediction. However, there are many limits for application to real classification problem with a single model. This study proposes ensemble SVM (support vector machine) model which assembles different SVM models with each different kernel functions. Our ensemble model is made and evaluated by v-fold cross-validation approach. The k top performing models are recruited into the ensemble. The classification is then carried out using the majority voting opinion of the ensemble. In this paper, we investigate the performance of ensemble SVM classifier in terms of accuracy, error rate, sensitivity, specificity, ROC curve, and AUC to compare with single SVM classifiers based on financial ratios dataset and simulation dataset. The results confirmed the advantages of our method: It is robust while providing good performance.