A re-evaluation of auditors’ opinions versus statistical models in bankruptcy prediction

Existent empirical evidence on the relative performance of auditors’ going concern opinions versus statistical models in predicting bankruptcy is mixed. This study attempts to add new reliable evidence on this important issue by conducting the comparison based upon an improved statistical model. The improved statistical model incorporates some new developments advocated by recent bankruptcy prediction research (e.g., Shumway, 2001). First, the following non-traditional variables are added: a composite measure of financial distress, industry failure rate, abnormal stock returns, and market capitalization. Secondly, a hazard model is employed. The prediction ability of the hazard model with incorporation of non-financial-ratio variables is superior to that of auditors’ going concern opinions in the holdout sample. This suggests that a well-developed statistical model could serve as a decision aid for auditors to better make going-concern judgments. Further analyses reveal some evidence that industry failure rate does not have a significant impact upon auditors’ going concern judgments as it should be; auditors could improve their going concern judgments by considering industry-level information in addition to firm-specific information. Finally, we find that auditors’ opinions do have incremental contribution beyond stock-market information and industry failure rate in predicting bankruptcy. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Bankruptcy prediction, Going concern opinions, Financial distress,