外文翻译---财务困境与破产的比较.doc

西 南 交 通 大 学本科毕业论文财务困境与破产的比较COMPARING FINANCIAL DISTRESS AND BANKRUPTCY年 级:2006 级学 号:20063027姓 名:景 吉 英专 业:会 计指导老师:段 宏2010 年 06 月英文原文：Comparing Financial Distress and BankruptcyAbstractMost research purporting to address the issue of financial distress has actually studied samples of bankrupt companies. In contrast, this paper starts with a sample of companies that are financially distressed but not yet bankrupt. The sample was obtained following a screen of the Compustat industry database with a three-tiered identification system. The screen bifurcated companies into financially distressed and not distressed groups. A multi-tiered screen reduces the incidence of mistakenly identifying a non-distressed company as financially distressed. The paper then asks whether identical causal factors are associated with both bankruptcy and financial distress. An early warning financial-distress model was developed and then compared to an existent model of bankruptcy. The final financial distress model included one variable already present in the bankruptcy model and four new variables. The partial overlap of explanatory factors between the models suggests a semi-strong relationship between financial distress and bankruptcy because some factors causing firms to become financially distressed do not later lead them into bankruptcy. The work shows that banks and other lenders who want to control problem loans should rely on more information than what is contained in well-known bankruptcy models.Key Words: Financial Distress, Bankruptcy, Early Warning Model, and RenewalIntroductionThe ability to predict with reasonable accuracy companies likely to file for bankruptcy protection benefits bank loan officers, investors, credit managers, regulators and vendors among others. These benefits principally accrue to participants in the end-stage of the corporate life cycle. That is, these predictions come too late in the process of corporate decline to do much more than give a warning that the final phase of corporate existence is near. Whereas early bankruptcy prediction benefits participants in the restructuring and bankruptcy process, it provides little aid to managers or boards of directors who are positioned to turn around a business in crisis or financial distress. Indeed, a key factor explaining the successful application of bankruptcy prediction models is that firms that file for Chapter 11 protection often exhibit financial distress symptoms for some time prior to the event.In most cases, bankruptcy occurs subsequent to a period of financial distress. Identification of healthy companies likely to become financially distressed would allow remedial actions to possibly correct the causes of corporate decline before bankruptcy ensued. In addition to benefiting the stakeholders listed above, earlier financial distress information would provide insights to managers and owners, and would increase confidence that future deliveries will be made among the network of other companies interrelated through corporate supply chains. Most importantly, such information would enable financially distressed companies to be treated and possibly cured rather than left to fail.The definition of financial distress is less precise than the legal actions that define proceedings such as bankruptcy or liquidation. Despite this uncertainty, it is clear that the condition of being financially distressed deviates from corporate normality in a manner similar to bankruptcy.Financial distress precedes virtually all bankruptcies excepting those precipitated by sudden and unexpected events such as natural disasters, changed government regulations, or legal judgments. The question naturally arises whether the same factors known to be indicators of future bankruptcies are also indicators of future cases of financial distress. They may not be because bankruptcy is an event that recognized the failure of the company; in contrast, financial distress happens in stages and to different degrees. If the two processes are related then variants of bankruptcy prediction models could yield financial distress predictions; alternatively, if variables that predict bankruptcy have no predictive power regarding financial distress then a completely new explanatory model is required. That inquiry is the objective of this paper.MethodologySample selection and financial distress identificationCombining many industries within a data set increases sample size, which produces econometric advantages resulting from smaller standard errors of estimates. But coefficients may not be stable across industries, which lead to a proliferation of coefficient estimates if industry specific coefficients are estimated. The industry-relative framework is one way to deal with the flexible coefficients problem and provides practical advantages arising from the use of a common platform to predict an event across many industries. Altman and Izan (1984) pioneered industry r。