IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pes/ierequ/v18y2023i2p551-581.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A novel approach to estimating the debt capacity of European SMEs

Author

Listed:
  • Michal Karas

    (Brno University of Technology, Czechia)

  • Mária Režòáková

    (Brno University of Technology, Czechia)

Abstract

Research background: The concept of debt capacity assumes that a maximum value of debt ratio exists that when exceeded triggers unfavourable consequences, such as drop in market value, default or a change in the business’ creditworthiness. With the current state of the art there is a priori no theoretical assurance that such a specific value exists, or rather it is represented by an interval of values. Beyond that, our understanding of debt capacity is often limited to a theoretical approximation by firm-specific factors, while the context of macroeconomic factors, especially those critical for SMEs, is neglected. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to present a novel approach to estimating SMEs’ debt capacity. Further, the aim is to answer the question of what firm-level and macro-economy conditions lead to exhausting the SMEs’ debt capacity and under what conditions a specific value of maximum debt capacity could be estimated. Methods: To estimate the debt capacity, we suggest a use of an information entropy minimising heuristic and the Minimal Description Length Principle. In this approach, the observed feature space is categorised into several regions. In this case, such a region represents a set of firm- and macroeconomy-specific conditions forming the debt capacity of the SMEs. To the best of our knowledge, such an approach has not yet been used in debt capacity applications. Findings & value added: We found out that the debt ratio itself provides little explanation of exhausted debt capacity, suggesting that high debt levels are compensated for by other factors. By using the suggested approach, a set of more than 100 different regions was analysed. It was found that in case of five regions (sets of conditions) the debt capacity is exhausted, as the high level of debt has significant distress consequences.

Suggested Citation

  • Michal Karas & Mária Režòáková, 2023. "A novel approach to estimating the debt capacity of European SMEs," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 18(2), pages 551-581, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:pes:ierequ:v:18:y:2023:i:2:p:551-581
    DOI: 10.24136/eq.2023.017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.017
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.24136/eq.2023.017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michel Dietsch, 2004. "Should SME exposures be treated as retail or corporate exposures: a comparative analysis of probabilities of default and assets correlations in French and German SMEs," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/14164, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Chien-Chiang Lee & Chih-Wei Wang & Chi Yin & Min-Rui Choo, 2021. "Do firm characteristics affect debt capacity? Evidence in CEO succession," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(48), pages 5567-5583, October.
    3. Patrick Musso & Stefano Schiavo, 2008. "The impact of financial constraints on firm survival and growth," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 135-149, April.
    4. Psillaki, Maria & Tsolas, Ioannis E. & Margaritis, Dimitris, 2010. "Evaluation of credit risk based on firm performance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 201(3), pages 873-881, March.
    5. Sylvain Catherine & Thomas Chaney & Zongbo Huang & David Sraer & David Thesmar, 2022. "Quantifying Reduced‐Form Evidence on Collateral Constraints," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(4), pages 2143-2181, August.
    6. Aleksandr Kljucnikov & Mehmet Civelek & Vendula Fialova & Andrea Folvarcna, 2021. "Organizational, local, and global innovativeness of family-owned SMEs depending on firm-individual level characteristics: evidence from the Czech Republic," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 16(1), pages 169-184, March.
    7. Ana León-Gómez & José Manuel Santos-Jaén & Daniel Ruiz-Palomo & Mercedes Palacios-Manzano, 2022. "Disentangling the impact of ICT adoption on SMEs performance: the mediating roles of corporate social responsibility and innovation," Oeconomia Copernicana, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 13(3), pages 831-866, September.
    8. Mehmet Civelek & Vladimír Krajèík & Vendula Fialova, 2023. "The impacts of innovative and competitive abilities of SMEs on their different financial risk concerns: System approach," Oeconomia Copernicana, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 14(1), pages 327-354, March.
    9. Brennan, Michael J & Schwartz, Edwardo S, 1978. "Corporate Income Taxes, Valuation, and the Problem of Optimal Capital Structure," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(1), pages 103-114, January.
    10. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Laeven, Luc & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2006. "The determinants of financing obstacles," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 932-952, October.
    11. Peter E. Kennedy, 2005. "Oh No! I Got the Wrong Sign! What Should I Do?," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 77-92, January.
    12. Ullah, Barkat, 2020. "Financial constraints, corruption, and SME growth in transition economies," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 120-132.
    13. Mehmet Civelek & Aleksandr Kljucnikov & Vendula Fialova & Andrea Folvarcna & Milan Stoch, 2021. "How innovativeness of family-owned SMEs differ depending on their characteristics?," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 16(2), pages 413-428, June.
    14. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1777-1804 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & Bruce C. Petersen, 1988. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(1), pages 141-206.
    16. Leary, Mark T. & Roberts, Michael R., 2010. "The pecking order, debt capacity, and information asymmetry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 332-355, March.
    17. Leonardo Di Marco & Luciano Nieddu, 2014. "Trigger factors that influence bankruptcy: a comparative and exploratory study," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 68(3-4), pages 191-198, July-Dece.
    18. Dietsch, Michel & Petey, Joel, 2004. "Should SME exposures be treated as retail or corporate exposures? A comparative analysis of default probabilities and asset correlations in French and German SMEs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 773-788, April.
    19. Hess, Dieter & Immenkötter, Philipp, 2014. "How much is too much? Debt capacity and financial flexibility," CFR Working Papers 14-03, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    20. Maria‐Teresa Marchica & Roberto Mura, 2010. "Financial Flexibility, Investment Ability, and Firm Value: Evidence from Firms with Spare Debt Capacity," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 1339-1365, December.
    21. Beaver, Wh, 1966. "Financial Ratios As Predictors Of Failure - Reply," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4, pages 123-127.
    22. Dorra Ellouze & Khadija Mnasri, 2020. "Business group diversification, financial constraints and firm performance: the case of Tunisian group affiliated firms," Post-Print hal-02999646, HAL.
    23. Aleksandr Kljuènikov & Mehmet Civelek & Vladimír Krajèík & Petr Novák & Michal Èervinka, 2022. "Financial performance and bankruptcy concerns of SMEs in their export decision," Oeconomia Copernicana, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 13(3), pages 867-890, September.
    24. Einar C. Kjenstad & Anil Kumar, 2022. "The effect of real estate prices on peer firms," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1022-1053, December.
    25. McGuinness, Gerard & Hogan, Teresa & Powell, Ronan, 2018. "European trade credit use and SME survival," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 81-103.
    26. Dorra Ellouze & Khadija Mnasri, 2020. "Business group diversification, financial constraints and firm performance: the case of Tunisian group affiliated firms," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 24(1), pages 273-301, March.
    27. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    28. Filipe, Sara Ferreira & Grammatikos, Theoharry & Michala, Dimitra, 2016. "Forecasting distress in European SME portfolios," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 112-135.
    29. Whited, Toni M, 1992. "Debt, Liquidity Constraints, and Corporate Investment: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1425-1460, September.
    30. Gungoraydinoglu, Ali & Öztekin, Özde, 2011. "Firm- and country-level determinants of corporate leverage: Some new international evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 1457-1474.
    31. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1972. "Some Aspects of the Pure Theory of Corporate Finance: Bankruptcies and Take-Overs," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 3(2), pages 458-482, Autumn.
    32. Agarwal, Vineet & Taffler, Richard, 2008. "Comparing the performance of market-based and accounting-based bankruptcy prediction models," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1541-1551, August.
    33. Beaver, Wh, 1966. "Financial Ratios As Predictors Of Failure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4, pages 71-111.
    34. Michal Karas & Mária Režòáková, 2021. "The role of financial constraint factors in predicting SME default," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 16(4), pages 859-883, December.
    35. Sudheer Chava & Robert A. Jarrow, 2008. "Bankruptcy Prediction with Industry Effects," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 21, pages 517-549, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    36. Mehmet Civelek & Vladimír Krajèík, 2022. "How do SMEs from different countries perceive export impediments depending on their firm-level characteristics? System approach," Oeconomia Copernicana, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 13(1), pages 55-78, March.
    37. Shumway, Tyler, 2001. "Forecasting Bankruptcy More Accurately: A Simple Hazard Model," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(1), pages 101-124, January.
    38. Jin, Yuying & Luo, Mingjin & Wan, Chao, 2018. "Financial constraints, macro-financing environment and post-crisis recovery of firms," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 54-67.
    39. Traczynski, Jeffrey, 2017. "Firm Default Prediction: A Bayesian Model-Averaging Approach," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(3), pages 1211-1245, June.
    40. Paola Bongini & Annalisa Ferrando & Emanuele Rossi & Monica Rossolini, 2021. "SME access to market-based finance across Eurozone countries," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1667-1697, April.
    41. Carlos Carreira & Filipe Silva, 2010. "No Deep Pockets: Some Stylized Empirical Results On Firms’ Financial Constraints," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 731-753, September.
    42. Frydman, Halina & Altman, Edward I & Kao, Duen-Li, 1985. "Introducing Recursive Partitioning for Financial Classification: The Case of Financial Distress," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 269-291, March.
    43. Dorra Ellouze & Khadija Mnasri, 2020. "Business group diversification, financial constraints and firm performance: the case of Tunisian group affiliated firms," Post-Print hal-03013201, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michal Karas & Mária Režòáková, 2021. "The role of financial constraint factors in predicting SME default," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 16(4), pages 859-883, December.
    2. Cathcart, Lara & Dufour, Alfonso & Rossi, Ludovico & Varotto, Simone, 2020. "The differential impact of leverage on the default risk of small and large firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    3. Mohammad Mahdi Mousavi & Jamal Ouenniche & Kaoru Tone, 2023. "A dynamic performance evaluation of distress prediction models," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(4), pages 756-784, July.
    4. Carmen Gallucci & Rosalia Santullli & Michele Modina & Vincenzo Formisano, 2023. "Financial ratios, corporate governance and bank-firm information: a Bayesian approach to predict SMEs’ default," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 27(3), pages 873-892, September.
    5. Francesco Ciampi & Valentina Cillo & Fabio Fiano, 2020. "Combining Kohonen maps and prior payment behavior for small enterprise default prediction," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1007-1039, April.
    6. Li, Chunyu & Lou, Chenxin & Luo, Dan & Xing, Kai, 2021. "Chinese corporate distress prediction using LASSO: The role of earnings management," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    7. Adriana Csikosova & Maria Janoskova & Katarina Culkova, 2020. "Application of Discriminant Analysis for Avoiding the Risk of Quarry Operation Failure," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-14, September.
    8. Ángel Beade & Manuel Rodríguez & José Santos, 2024. "Multiperiod Bankruptcy Prediction Models with Interpretable Single Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 64(3), pages 1357-1390, September.
    9. Duc Hong Vo & Binh Ninh Vo Pham & Chi Minh Ho & Michael McAleer, 2019. "Corporate Financial Distress of Industry Level Listings in Vietnam," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-17, September.
    10. Sumaira Ashraf & Elisabete G. S. Félix & Zélia Serrasqueiro, 2019. "Do Traditional Financial Distress Prediction Models Predict the Early Warning Signs of Financial Distress?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-17, April.
    11. John Nkwoma Inekwe, 2016. "Financial Distress, Employees’ Welfare and Entrepreneurship Among SMEs," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 1135-1153, December.
    12. Frank Ranganai Matenda & Mabutho Sibanda & Eriyoti Chikodza & Victor Gumbo, 2022. "Bankruptcy prediction for private firms in developing economies: a scoping review and guidance for future research," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 72(4), pages 927-966, December.
    13. B Korcan Ak & Patricia M Dechow & Yuan Sun & Annika Yu Wang, 2013. "The use of financial ratio models to help investors predict and interpret significant corporate events," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 38(3), pages 553-598, December.
    14. El Kalak, Izidin & Hudson, Robert, 2016. "The effect of size on the failure probabilities of SMEs: An empirical study on the US market using discrete hazard model," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 135-145.
    15. Evangelos C. Charalambakis & Ian Garrett, 2019. "On corporate financial distress prediction: What can we learn from private firms in a developing economy? Evidence from Greece," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 467-491, February.
    16. Nawaf Almaskati & Ron Bird & Yue Lu & Danny Leung, 2019. "The Role of Corporate Governance and Estimation Methods in Predicting Bankruptcy," Working Papers in Economics 19/16, University of Waikato.
    17. William H. Beaver & Stefano Cascino & Maria Correia & Maureen F. McNichols, 2019. "Group Affiliation and Default Prediction," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3559-3584, August.
    18. Elsayed, Mohamed & Elshandidy, Tamer, 2020. "Do narrative-related disclosures predict corporate failure? Evidence from UK non-financial publicly quoted firms," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    19. Mohammad Mahdi Mousavi & Jamal Ouenniche, 2018. "Multi-criteria ranking of corporate distress prediction models: empirical evaluation and methodological contributions," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 271(2), pages 853-886, December.
    20. Wu, Y. & Gaunt, C. & Gray, S., 2010. "A comparison of alternative bankruptcy prediction models," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 34-45.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    debt capacity; financial distress; macroeconomic factors; financial constraints;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pes:ierequ:v:18:y:2023:i:2:p:551-581. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Adam P. Balcerzak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibgtopl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.