A Comparison of Jordanian Bankruptcy Models: Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network and Discriminant Analysis

The main purpose of this study is to develop and compare the classification accuracy of bankruptcy prediction models using the multilayer perceptron neural network, and discriminant analysis, for the industrial sector in Jordan. The models were developed using the ten popular financial ratios found to be useful in earlier studies and expected to predict bankruptcy. The study sample was divided into two samples; the original sample (n=14) for developing the two models and a hold-out sample (n=18) for testing the prediction of models for three years prior to bankruptcy during the period from 2000 to 2014. The results indicated that there was a difference in prediction accuracy between models in two and three years prior to failure. The results indicated that the multilayer perceptron neural network model achieved a higher overall classification accuracy rate for all three years prior to bankruptcy than the discriminant analysis model. Furthermore, the prediction rate was 94.44% two years prior to bankruptcy using multilayer perceptron neural network model and 72.22% using the discriminant analysis model. This is a significant difference of 22.22%. On the other side, the prediction rate of 83.34% three years prior to bankruptcy using multilayer perceptron neural network model and 61.11% using discriminant analysis model. We indicate there was a difference exists of 22.23%. In addition, the multilayer perceptron neural network model provides in the first two years prior to bankruptcy the lowest percentage of type I error.