Classification Techniques, Sample Size and Predictive Performance: A Comparative Analysis Based on a Spanish Case

Abstract

The paper uses as a benchmark the problem of forecasting the level of profitability of Spanish commercial and industrial companies upon the basis of a set of financial ratios. This case illustrates well a distinctive feature of many financial prediction problems, namely that of being characterized by a high dimension feature space as well as a low degree of separability. A comparative study of the performance of a number of classificatory devices, both parametric (LDA and Logit) and non-parametric (perceptron neural nets and fuzzy-rule-based classifiers) is conducted, and a Monte Carlo simulation-based approach is used in order to measure the average effects of sample size variations on the predictive performance of each classifier. Response surfaces are estimated in order to summarize the results.