Abstract
Many researchers have focused on developing bankruptcy prediction models using modeling techniques, such as statistical methods including multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and logit analysis or artificial intelligence techniques containing artificial neural networks (ANN), decision trees, and support vector machines (SVM), to secure enhanced performance. Most of the bankruptcy prediction models in academic studies have used financial ratios as main input variables. The bankruptcy of firms is associated with firm's financial states and the external economic situation. However, the inclusion of qualitative information, such as the economic atmosphere, has not been actively discussed despite the fact that exploiting only financial ratios has some drawbacks. Accounting information, such as financial ratios, is based on past data, and it is usually determined one year before bankruptcy. Thus, a time lag exists between the point of closing financial statements and the point of credit evaluation. In addition, financial ratios do not contain environmental factors, such as external economic situations. Therefore, using only financial ratios may be insufficient in constructing a bankruptcy prediction model, because they essentially reflect past corporate internal accounting information while neglecting recent information. Thus, qualitative information must be added to the conventional bankruptcy prediction model to supplement accounting information. Due to the lack of an analytic mechanism for obtaining and processing qualitative information from various information sources, previous studies have only used qualitative information. However, recently, big data analytics, such as text mining techniques, have been drawing much attention in academia and industry, with an increasing amount of unstructured text data available on the web. A few previous studies have sought to adopt big data analytics in business prediction modeling. Nevertheless, the use of qualitative information on the web for business prediction modeling is still deemed to be in the primary stage, restricted to limited applications, such as stock prediction and movie revenue prediction applications. Thus, it is necessary to apply big data analytics techniques, such as text mining, to various business prediction problems, including credit risk evaluation. Analytic methods are required for processing qualitative information represented in unstructured text form due to the complexity of managing and processing unstructured text data. This study proposes a bankruptcy prediction model for Korean small- and medium-sized construction firms using both quantitative information, such as financial ratios, and qualitative information acquired from economic news articles. The performance of the proposed method depends on how well information types are transformed from qualitative into quantitative information that is suitable for incorporating into the bankruptcy prediction model. We employ big data analytics techniques, especially text mining, as a mechanism for processing qualitative information. The sentiment index is provided at the industry level by extracting from a large amount of text data to quantify the external economic atmosphere represented in the media. The proposed method involves keyword-based sentiment analysis using a domain-specific sentiment lexicon to extract sentiment from economic news articles. The generated sentiment lexicon is designed to represent sentiment for the construction business by considering the relationship between the occurring term and the actual situation with respect to the economic condition of the industry rather than the inherent semantics of the term. The experimental results proved that incorporating qualitative information based on big data analytics into the traditional bankruptcy prediction model based on accounting information is effective for enhancing the predictive performance. The sentiment variable extracted from economic news articles had an impact on corporate bankruptcy. In particular, a negative sentiment variable improved the accuracy of corporate bankruptcy prediction because the corporate bankruptcy of construction firms is sensitive to poor economic conditions. The bankruptcy prediction model using qualitative information based on big data analytics contributes to the field, in that it reflects not only relatively recent information but also environmental factors, such as external economic conditions.
대부분의 부도 예측에 관한 연구는 재무 변수를 중심으로 통계적 방법 또는 인공지능 기법을 적용하여 부도 예측 모형을 구축하였다. 그러나 재무비율과 같은 회계 정보를 이용한 부도 예측 모형은 재무 제표 결산 시점과 신용평가 시점 간 시차를 고려하지 않을 뿐만 아니라 해당 산업의 경제적 상황과 같은 외부 환경적인 요소를 반영하기 어렵다는 한계점이 존재하였다. 기업의 부도 여부를 예측하기 위해 정량 정보인 재무 변수만을 이용하는 것에 한계가 있음에도 불구하고 정성 정보를 부도 예측 모형에 반영한 연구는 아직 미흡한 실정이다. 본 연구에서는 재무 변수를 이용하는 기존 부도 예측 모형의 성과를 개선하기 위해 빅데이터 기반의 정성 정보를 추가적인 입력 변수로 활용하는 부도 예측 모형을 제안하였다. 제안 모형의 성과 향상은 정성 정보를 예측 모형에 통합시키기에 적합한 형태로 정보의 유형을 변환시킬 수 있는가에 따라 달려있다. 이에 본 연구에서는 정성 정보 처리를 위한 방법으로 빅데이터 분석 기법 중 하나인 텍스트 마이닝(Text Mining)을 활용하였다. 해당 산업과 관련된 경제 뉴스 데이터로부터 경제 상황에 대한 감성 정보를 추출하기 위해 도메인 중심의 감성 어휘 사전을 구축하고, 구축된 어휘 사전을 기반으로 감성 분석(Sentiment Analysis)을 수행하였다. 형태소 분석 등을 포함한 텍스트 전처리 과정을 거쳐 감성 어휘를 추출하고, 각 어휘에 대한 극성 및 감성 점수를 부여하였다. 분석 결과, 전통적 부도 예측 모형에 경제 뉴스 데이터에서 도출한 정성 정보를 반영하는 것은 모형의 성과를 개선하는 것으로 나타났다. 특히, 경제 상황에 대한 부정적 감정이 기업의 부도 여부를 예측하는 데 더욱 효과적임을 알 수 있었다.
