Bankruptcy Prediction with Financial Systemic Risk

Abstract

Financial systemic risk – defined as the risk of collapse of an entire financial system vis-a-vis any one individual financial institution – is making inroads into academic research in the aftermath of the late 2000s Global Financial Crisis. We shed light on this new concept by investigating the value of various systemic financial risk measures in the corporate failure predictions of listed nonfinancial firms. Our sample includes 225,813 firm-quarter observations covering 8,604 US firms from 2000 Q1 to 2016 Q4. We find that financial systemic risk is incrementally useful in forecasting corporate failure over and above the predictions of the traditional accounting-based and market-based factors. Our results are stronger when the firm in consideration has higher equity volatility relative to financial sector volatility, the smaller size relative to the market, and more debts in current liabilities. The combined evidence suggests that systemic risk is a useful supplementary source of information in capital markets.