Title
A Double HMM approach to Altman Z-scores and credit ratings
Abstract
Credit ratings and accounting-based Altman Z-scores are two important sources of information for assessing the creditworthiness of firms. In this paper we build a model based on a double hidden Markov model, (DHMM), to extract information about the ''true'' credit qualities of firms from both the Z-scores evaluated from the accounting ratios of the firms and their posted credit ratings. The evolution of the ''true'' credit quality over time is estimated from observed data using filtering methods and the EM algorithm. Recursive updates of optimal estimates are provided via filtering so that the model is ''self-tuning'', or ''self-calibrating''. We illustrate the practical implementation of the proposed model using actual accounting ratios data of firms from different regions and their posted credit ratings data.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1016/j.eswa.2013.08.052
Expert Syst. Appl.
Keywords
Field
DocType
accounting ratio,observed data,actual accounting ratios data,hmm approach,double hidden markov model,credit rating,credit quality,posted credit rating,accounting-based altman z-scores,posted credit ratings data,credit ratings,em algorithm
Financial ratio,Expectation–maximization algorithm,Computer science,Filter (signal processing),Standard score,Credit rating,Hidden Markov model,Statistics,Recursion
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
41
4
0957-4174
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
9
0.57
0
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Robert J. Elliott133350.13
Tak Kuen Siu211420.25
Eric S. Fung3323.09