The efficacy of liquidation and bankruptcy prediction models for assessing going concern

Recent research questions whether bankruptcy is the best proxy for assessing going concern since filing for bankruptcy is not synonymous with the invalidity of the going concern assumption. Furthermore, in contrast to debtor‐oriented countries such as the USA, liquidation is the most likely outcome of corporate insolvency in creditor‐oriented countries such as the UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. This suggests that bankruptcy prediction models have limited use for assessing going concern in creditor‐oriented countries. This study examines the efficacy of a corporate liquidation model and a benchmark bankruptcy prediction model for assessing company liquidation. It finds that the former is more accurate in predicting company liquidations in comparison with the latter. Most importantly, Type 1 errors for the liquidation prediction model are significantly lower than for the bankruptcy prediction model, which indicates its greater efficacy as an analytical tool for assessing going concern. The results also suggest that bankruptcy prediction models might not be appropriate for assessing going concern in countries where the insolvency code is creditor‐oriented.