Dynamic prediction of financial distress based on Kalman filtering

Abstract

The widely used discriminant models currently for financial distress prediction have deficiencies in dynamics. Based on the dynamic nature of corporate financial distress, dynamic prediction models consisting of a process model and a discriminant model, which are used to describe the dynamic process and discriminant rules of financial distress, respectively, is established. The operation of the dynamic prediction is achieved by Kalman filtering algorithm. And a general n-step-ahead prediction algorithm based on Kalman filtering is deduced in order for prospective prediction. An empirical study for China's manufacturing industry has been conducted and the results have proved the accuracy and advance of predicting financial distress in such case. © 2014 Qian Zhuang and Lianghua Chen.