Monitoring Privately-held Firms' Default Risk in Real Time: A Signal-Knowledge Transfer Learning Model

Download or read book Monitoring Privately-held Firms' Default Risk in Real Time: A Signal-Knowledge Transfer Learning Model written by Mr. Jorge A Chan-Lau and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2024-06-07 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We develop a mixed-frequency, tree-based, gradient-boosting model designed to assess the default risk of privately held firms in real time. The model uses data from publicly-traded companies to construct a probability of default (PD) function. This function integrates high-frequency, market-based, aggregate distress signals with low-frequency, firm-level financial ratios, and macroeconomic indicators. When provided with private firms' financial ratios, the model, which we name signal-knowledge transfer learning model (SKTL), transfers insights gained from 35 thousand publicly-traded firms to more than 4 million private-held ones and performs well as an ordinal measure of privately-held firms' default risk.