• Title/Summary/Keyword: Business Ability

Search Result 1,205, Processing Time 0.03 seconds

Determinants of Variance Risk Premium (경제지표를 활용한 분산프리미엄의 결정요인 추정과 수익률 예측)

  • Yoon, Sun-Joong
    • Economic Analysis
    • /
    • v.25 no.1
    • /
    • pp.1-33
    • /
    • 2019
  • This paper examines the economic factors that are related to the dynamics of the variance risk premium, and specially, which economic factors are related to the forecasting power of the variance premium regarding future index returns. Eleven general economic variables, eight interest rate variables, and eleven sentiment-associated variables are used to figure out the relevant economic variables that affect the variance risk premium. According to our empirical results, the won-dollar exchange rates, foreign reserves, the historical/implied volatility, and interest rate variables all have significant coefficients. The highest adjusted R-squared is more than 65 percent, indicating their significant explanatory power of the variance risk premium. Next, to verify the economic variables associated with the predictability of the variance risk premium, we conduct forecasting regressions to predict future stock returns and volatilities for one to six months. Our empirical analysis shows that only the won-dollar exchange rate, among the many variables associated with the dynamics of the variance risk premium, has a significant forecasting ability regarding future index returns. These results are consistent with results found in previous studies, including Londono (2012) and Bollerslev et al. (2014), which show that the variance risk premium is related to global risk factors.

The effect of learning motivation of learners who have experienced university part-time registration system on learner characteristics, learning satisfaction, and intention to continue participation (대학의 시간등록제 학습을 경험한 학습자의 학습동기가 학습자특성, 학습만족, 참여지속의도에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee Sang-woo;Oh Hyun-sung
    • The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
    • /
    • v.10 no.3
    • /
    • pp.915-922
    • /
    • 2024
  • Currently, in Korea, there is a growing interest in improving the learning ability of the education target group due to the low birth rate and aging population. The dilemma of a shrinking population ultimately causes the burden of having to come up with a plan to efficiently maximize the use of available population resources. Accordingly, this study explores the impact of learning motivation (activity-oriented motivation, learning-oriented motivation) on learner characteristics (learning value, learning efficacy) and learning satisfaction, and as a result, intention to continue participating in lifelong learning (recommendation intention, relationship continuation intention). As a results of the analysis, it shows that learning motivation had a significant effect on learning satisfaction, and the emotions formed in this way had a positive effect on recommendation intention and relationship continuation intention. In addition, the results show that learning-oriented motivation had a significant effect on both learning satisfaction and learner characteristics, but that learning efficacy had no effect on recommendation intention. This study is significant in that it presents the basis for an educational system based on relationship maintenance and learner characteristics by considering the learner's orientation, individual achievement direction, recommendation intention, and relationship continuation intention.

A Study of Factors Associated with Software Developers Job Turnover (데이터마이닝을 활용한 소프트웨어 개발인력의 업무 지속수행의도 결정요인 분석)

  • Jeon, In-Ho;Park, Sun W.;Park, Yoon-Joo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.21 no.2
    • /
    • pp.191-204
    • /
    • 2015
  • According to the '2013 Performance Assessment Report on the Financial Program' from the National Assembly Budget Office, the unfilled recruitment ratio of Software(SW) Developers in South Korea was 25% in the 2012 fiscal year. Moreover, the unfilled recruitment ratio of highly-qualified SW developers reaches almost 80%. This phenomenon is intensified in small and medium enterprises consisting of less than 300 employees. Young job-seekers in South Korea are increasingly avoiding becoming a SW developer and even the current SW developers want to change careers, which hinders the national development of IT industries. The Korean government has recently realized the problem and implemented policies to foster young SW developers. Due to this effort, it has become easier to find young SW developers at the beginning-level. However, it is still hard to recruit highly-qualified SW developers for many IT companies. This is because in order to become a SW developing expert, having a long term experiences are important. Thus, improving job continuity intentions of current SW developers is more important than fostering new SW developers. Therefore, this study surveyed the job continuity intentions of SW developers and analyzed the factors associated with them. As a method, we carried out a survey from September 2014 to October 2014, which was targeted on 130 SW developers who were working in IT industries in South Korea. We gathered the demographic information and characteristics of the respondents, work environments of a SW industry, and social positions for SW developers. Afterward, a regression analysis and a decision tree method were performed to analyze the data. These two methods are widely used data mining techniques, which have explanation ability and are mutually complementary. We first performed a linear regression method to find the important factors assaociated with a job continuity intension of SW developers. The result showed that an 'expected age' to work as a SW developer were the most significant factor associated with the job continuity intention. We supposed that the major cause of this phenomenon is the structural problem of IT industries in South Korea, which requires SW developers to change the work field from developing area to management as they are promoted. Also, a 'motivation' to become a SW developer and a 'personality (introverted tendency)' of a SW developer are highly importantly factors associated with the job continuity intention. Next, the decision tree method was performed to extract the characteristics of highly motivated developers and the low motivated ones. We used well-known C4.5 algorithm for decision tree analysis. The results showed that 'motivation', 'personality', and 'expected age' were also important factors influencing the job continuity intentions, which was similar to the results of the regression analysis. In addition to that, the 'ability to learn' new technology was a crucial factor for the decision rules of job continuity. In other words, a person with high ability to learn new technology tends to work as a SW developer for a longer period of time. The decision rule also showed that a 'social position' of SW developers and a 'prospect' of SW industry were minor factors influencing job continuity intensions. On the other hand, 'type of an employment (regular position/ non-regular position)' and 'type of company (ordering company/ service providing company)' did not affect the job continuity intension in both methods. In this research, we demonstrated the job continuity intentions of SW developers, who were actually working at IT companies in South Korea, and we analyzed the factors associated with them. These results can be used for human resource management in many IT companies when recruiting or fostering highly-qualified SW experts. It can also help to build SW developer fostering policy and to solve the problem of unfilled recruitment of SW Developers in South Korea.

Investigating Dynamic Mutation Process of Issues Using Unstructured Text Analysis (부도예측을 위한 KNN 앙상블 모형의 동시 최적화)

  • Min, Sung-Hwan
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.22 no.1
    • /
    • pp.139-157
    • /
    • 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.

The Development and Effectiveness of a PBL Based Career Education Program (PBL 기반 진로교육 프로그램의 개발 및 효과검증)

  • Lee, Hye-Suk;Kim, You-Me
    • The Korean Journal of Elementary Counseling
    • /
    • v.8 no.1
    • /
    • pp.33-50
    • /
    • 2009
  • The purpose of this study was to develop a PBL-based career education program and to examine its effectiveness on school children's career maturity. It's specifically meant to prepare a career education program to assist students to get an accurate grip on their aptitude, interest and personality and explore various sorts of occupations in the course of solving authentic and contextual career-related problems. After children's developmental characteristics and needs were analyzed, task analysis was implemented, and the objectives were defined. And then the core of the program, PBL problems were developed, and the validity of the problems were verified Evaluation plans and tools were prepared to assess children's problem-solving process and presentation, and an online learning space was designed. The program that consisted of 10-minute 21 sessions was provided to fifth-grade elementary schoolers for eight weeks. The findings of the study were as follows: The experimental group that participated in the PBL-based career education program showed a more significant improvement than the control group that didn't in career attitude and three career attitude subfactors involving planness, disposition and compromise. And the former made a more significant progress than the latter in career ability and its subfactors including vocational comprehension, self-understanding and decision-making skills as well. As a result of making a content analysis to make up for the survey, the students reported that they were able to get an objective understanding of themselves and acquire diverse and profound knowledge on work and the business world in the middle of solving the given PBL problems related to different areas in group and giving a presentation. In conclusion, a PBL based career education program developed by this researcher encouraged the students to have an objective self-understanding, to have a dynamic interactive discussion with their group members. Therefore the program had a positive impact on boosting the career attitude and career ability of the elementary schoolers. The findings suggested that in the field of elementary career education, autonomous learning attitude and subjecthood are the crucial factors to stimulate school children to explore and create their own future.

  • PDF

Relationship between Entrepreneurial Education and Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition: Focused on the Entrepreneurship Major College Students (앙트러프러너십 교육과 창업기회인식 역량과의 관계: 숙명여대 앙트러프러너십 전공 사례를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Woo Jin;Son, Jong Seo;Oh, Hyemi
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
    • /
    • v.13 no.3
    • /
    • pp.71-83
    • /
    • 2018
  • Recently, there are many efforts to define the field of entrepreneurship as an area of independent study. According to Shane & Venkataraman, the study of entrepreneurship is moving toward understanding the combination of entrepreneurial individual and valuable opportunity in becoming entrepreneurs. In Korea, entrepreneurship education is spreading widely on the basis of universities and in 2010 the entrepreneurship major was created in Sookmyung Women's University for the first time in Korea. The results of this study are as follows. First, there are many research about examining the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship intention. Nevertheless, there are lack of the study focusing on the opportunity recognition which many scholars have recognized as the independent study field of entrepreneurship domain. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of satisfaction of entrepreneurship major education on entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and to examine the mediating effect of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition according to educational commitment. The questionnaires were carried out for 3 weeks to entrepreneurship major students in Sookmyung Woment's University. A total of 84 surveys were collected and statistically analyzed by the R program. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the satisfaction of education positively influences the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities. Commitment also has a full mediating effect on the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities. The results of this analysis confirm that the ability to recognize entrepreneurial opportunity is developed by entrepreneurship education, and during the study students' commitment has an important role in the relationship between educational satisfaction and entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. The results were verified through empirical analysis. Satisfaction with entrepreneurship education and awareness of entrepreneurship opportunities through entrepreneurship can be anticipated as entrepreneurship activities in the future.

A Study on the Education and Training system in Korean Animation Industry - Suggestions about Curriculum in a Department of Animation in Korean Universities from the Perspective of Arts and Cultural Management (한국 애니메이션 인력 양성 시스템에 대한 연구 - 대학 애니메이션 교육 과정에 대한 예술경영적 제언)

  • Kang, Yunju
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
    • /
    • s.34
    • /
    • pp.317-344
    • /
    • 2014
  • Perspectives on the basis of arts and cultural management, this study intends to suggest improvements in core curriculums that are required in order for South Korea, a country that has initiated into the animation industry through outsourcing from big-budget animation production countries such as America and Japan, to develop its own strong base in creative animation industry. The perspectives of arts management in this context means an integration nexus between human studies, social science and management, and suggestions are as follow: First, it is crucial to understand the current trend of animation industry structure across the globe, as well as to develop the ability of co-production. Animation industry often requires technical skills, capital strength and human resources, each having equal importance. Therefore, thorough analysis of the three components in worldwide animation industry must be preceded for animation production services. To do so, collaboration with major animation creation countries is the best option and is highly encouraged, so that the national animation curriculum shall be enhanced to meet such demands and hence develop various abilities. The second is a good understanding of new-media and new-platforms. Not only the traditional distributor of animation such as television and theater, the distribution system expands its scope to a variety of online sources including pod-casts and the Internet. Under these circumstances, a deep understanding towards animation distribution system and an analysis of the new consumer channel are also of paramount importance for animation production. Third, a possibility of animation supply chain through diversified routes and media have paved the way for a possible animation production services and distribution without a mega-budget. Thus, new curriculum shall need to reinforce marketing and management aspects that will in turn help individuals to establish a self-employed creative business. Last but not least, this study further includes illustration of current curriculum of animation studies in national universities, followed by detailed suggestions for the curriculum improvements based on the above mentioned three factors. It was observed that the current curriculums have been solely focused on practical works and technical skills of animation and art studies; a four-year-course colleges that provide animation courses usually lack components of human studies, social science and management. Thus, this study proposes essential contexts of management studies that are needed for individual business and also curriculum improvements that are derived from the analysis of the current industry and the new media.

Keyword Network Analysis for Technology Forecasting (기술예측을 위한 특허 키워드 네트워크 분석)

  • Choi, Jin-Ho;Kim, Hee-Su;Im, Nam-Gyu
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.17 no.4
    • /
    • pp.227-240
    • /
    • 2011
  • New concepts and ideas often result from extensive recombination of existing concepts or ideas. Both researchers and developers build on existing concepts and ideas in published papers or registered patents to develop new theories and technologies that in turn serve as a basis for further development. As the importance of patent increases, so does that of patent analysis. Patent analysis is largely divided into network-based and keyword-based analyses. The former lacks its ability to analyze information technology in details while the letter is unable to identify the relationship between such technologies. In order to overcome the limitations of network-based and keyword-based analyses, this study, which blends those two methods, suggests the keyword network based analysis methodology. In this study, we collected significant technology information in each patent that is related to Light Emitting Diode (LED) through text mining, built a keyword network, and then executed a community network analysis on the collected data. The results of analysis are as the following. First, the patent keyword network indicated very low density and exceptionally high clustering coefficient. Technically, density is obtained by dividing the number of ties in a network by the number of all possible ties. The value ranges between 0 and 1, with higher values indicating denser networks and lower values indicating sparser networks. In real-world networks, the density varies depending on the size of a network; increasing the size of a network generally leads to a decrease in the density. The clustering coefficient is a network-level measure that illustrates the tendency of nodes to cluster in densely interconnected modules. This measure is to show the small-world property in which a network can be highly clustered even though it has a small average distance between nodes in spite of the large number of nodes. Therefore, high density in patent keyword network means that nodes in the patent keyword network are connected sporadically, and high clustering coefficient shows that nodes in the network are closely connected one another. Second, the cumulative degree distribution of the patent keyword network, as any other knowledge network like citation network or collaboration network, followed a clear power-law distribution. A well-known mechanism of this pattern is the preferential attachment mechanism, whereby a node with more links is likely to attain further new links in the evolution of the corresponding network. Unlike general normal distributions, the power-law distribution does not have a representative scale. This means that one cannot pick a representative or an average because there is always a considerable probability of finding much larger values. Networks with power-law distributions are therefore often referred to as scale-free networks. The presence of heavy-tailed scale-free distribution represents the fundamental signature of an emergent collective behavior of the actors who contribute to forming the network. In our context, the more frequently a patent keyword is used, the more often it is selected by researchers and is associated with other keywords or concepts to constitute and convey new patents or technologies. The evidence of power-law distribution implies that the preferential attachment mechanism suggests the origin of heavy-tailed distributions in a wide range of growing patent keyword network. Third, we found that among keywords that flew into a particular field, the vast majority of keywords with new links join existing keywords in the associated community in forming the concept of a new patent. This finding resulted in the same outcomes for both the short-term period (4-year) and long-term period (10-year) analyses. Furthermore, using the keyword combination information that was derived from the methodology suggested by our study enables one to forecast which concepts combine to form a new patent dimension and refer to those concepts when developing a new patent.

An Empirical Analysis of The Determinants and Long-term Projections for The Demand and Supply of Labor force (노동력수급의 요인분석과 전망)

  • 김중수
    • Korea journal of population studies
    • /
    • v.9 no.1
    • /
    • pp.41-53
    • /
    • 1986
  • The purpose of this paper is two-fold. One is to investigate the determinants of the demand supply of labor, and another is to project long-term demand and supply of labor. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, theoretical models and important hypotheses are discussed: for the case of a labor supply model, issues regarding discouraged worker model, permanent wage hypothesis, and relative wage hypothesis are examined and for the case of a demand model, issues regarding estimating an employment demand equation within the framework of an inverted short-run produc- tion function are inspected. Particularly, a theoretical justification for introducing a demographic cohort variable in a labor supply equation is also investigated. In the second part, empirical results of the estimated supply and demand equations are analyzed. Supply equations are specified differently between primary and secondary labor force. That is, for the case of primary labor force groups including males aged 25 and over, attempts are made to explain the variations in participation behavior within the framework of a neo-classical economics oriented permanent wage hypothesis. On the other hand, for the case of females and young male labor force, variations in participation rates are explained in terms of a relative wage hypothesis. In other words, the participation behavior of primary labor force is related to short-rum business fluctuations, while that of secondary labor force is associated with intermediate swings of business cycles and demographic changes in the age structure of population. Some major findings arc summarized as follows. (1) For the case of males aged 14~19 and 2O~24 groups and females aged 14∼19, the effect of schhool enrollment rate is dominant and thus it plays a key role in explaining the recent declining trend of participation rates of these groups. (2) Except for females aged 20∼24, a demographic cohort variable, which captures the impact of changes in the age structure on participation behavior, turns out to show positive and significant coefficients for secondary labor force groups. (3) A cyclical variable produce significant coefficients for prime-age males and females reflecting that as compared to other groups the labor supply behavior of these groups is more closely related to short-run cyclical variations (4) The wage variable, which represents a labor-leisure trade-off turns out to yield significant coefficients only for older age groups (6O and over) for both males and females. This result reveals that unlike the experiences of other higer-income nations, the participation decision of the labor force of our nation is not highly sensitive with respect to wage changes. (5)The estimated result of the employment demand equation displays that given that the level of GNP remains constant the ability of the economy to absord labor force has been declining;that is, the elasticity of GNP with respect to labor absorption decreasre over time. In the third part, the results of long-term projections (for the period of 1986 and 1995) for age-sex specific participation rates are discussed. The participation rate of total males is anticipated to increase slightly, which is contrary to the recent trend of declining participation rates of this group. For the groups aged 25 and below, the participation rates are forecast to decline although the magnitude of decrease is likely to shrink. On the other hand, the participation rate of prime- age males (25 to 59 years old) is predicted to increase slightly during 1985 and 1990. For the case of females, except for 20∼24 and 25∼34 age groups, the participation rates are projected to decrease: the participation rates of 25∼34 age group is likely to remain at its current level, while the participation rate of 20∼24 age group is expected to increase considerably in the future (specifi- cally, from 55% in 1985 to 61% in 1990 and to 69% in 1995). In conclusion, while the number of an excess supply of labor will increase in absolute magnitude, its size as a ratio of total labor force is not likely to increase. However, the age composition of labor force is predicted to change; that is, the proportion of prime-age male and female labor force is projected to increase.

  • PDF

Corporate Bond Rating Using Various Multiclass Support Vector Machines (다양한 다분류 SVM을 적용한 기업채권평가)

  • Ahn, Hyun-Chul;Kim, Kyoung-Jae
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.19 no.2
    • /
    • pp.157-178
    • /
    • 2009
  • Corporate credit rating is a very important factor in the market for corporate debt. Information concerning corporate operations is often disseminated to market participants through the changes in credit ratings that are published by professional rating agencies, such as Standard and Poor's (S&P) and Moody's Investor Service. Since these agencies generally require a large fee for the service, and the periodically provided ratings sometimes do not reflect the default risk of the company at the time, it may be advantageous for bond-market participants to be able to classify credit ratings before the agencies actually publish them. As a result, it is very important for companies (especially, financial companies) to develop a proper model of credit rating. From a technical perspective, the credit rating constitutes a typical, multiclass, classification problem because rating agencies generally have ten or more categories of ratings. For example, S&P's ratings range from AAA for the highest-quality bonds to D for the lowest-quality bonds. The professional rating agencies emphasize the importance of analysts' subjective judgments in the determination of credit ratings. However, in practice, a mathematical model that uses the financial variables of companies plays an important role in determining credit ratings, since it is convenient to apply and cost efficient. These financial variables include the ratios that represent a company's leverage status, liquidity status, and profitability status. Several statistical and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have been applied as tools for predicting credit ratings. Among them, artificial neural networks are most prevalent in the area of finance because of their broad applicability to many business problems and their preeminent ability to adapt. However, artificial neural networks also have many defects, including the difficulty in determining the values of the control parameters and the number of processing elements in the layer as well as the risk of over-fitting. Of late, because of their robustness and high accuracy, support vector machines (SVMs) have become popular as a solution for problems with generating accurate prediction. An SVM's solution may be globally optimal because SVMs seek to minimize structural risk. On the other hand, artificial neural network models may tend to find locally optimal solutions because they seek to minimize empirical risk. In addition, no parameters need to be tuned in SVMs, barring the upper bound for non-separable cases in linear SVMs. Since SVMs were originally devised for binary classification, however they are not intrinsically geared for multiclass classifications as in credit ratings. Thus, researchers have tried to extend the original SVM to multiclass classification. Hitherto, a variety of techniques to extend standard SVMs to multiclass SVMs (MSVMs) has been proposed in the literature Only a few types of MSVM are, however, tested using prior studies that apply MSVMs to credit ratings studies. In this study, we examined six different techniques of MSVMs: (1) One-Against-One, (2) One-Against-AIL (3) DAGSVM, (4) ECOC, (5) Method of Weston and Watkins, and (6) Method of Crammer and Singer. In addition, we examined the prediction accuracy of some modified version of conventional MSVM techniques. To find the most appropriate technique of MSVMs for corporate bond rating, we applied all the techniques of MSVMs to a real-world case of credit rating in Korea. The best application is in corporate bond rating, which is the most frequently studied area of credit rating for specific debt issues or other financial obligations. For our study the research data were collected from National Information and Credit Evaluation, Inc., a major bond-rating company in Korea. The data set is comprised of the bond-ratings for the year 2002 and various financial variables for 1,295 companies from the manufacturing industry in Korea. We compared the results of these techniques with one another, and with those of traditional methods for credit ratings, such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), multinomial logistic regression (MLOGIT), and artificial neural networks (ANNs). As a result, we found that DAGSVM with an ordered list was the best approach for the prediction of bond rating. In addition, we found that the modified version of ECOC approach can yield higher prediction accuracy for the cases showing clear patterns.