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Look Who's Talking: Interpretable Machine Learning for Assessing Italian SMEs Credit Default

Lisa Crosato, Caterina Liberati, Marco Repetto

arXiv 31 Aug 2021 · Statistics — Machine Learning

arXiv:2108.13914 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Academic research and the financial industry have recently paid great attention to Machine Learning algorithms due to their power to solve complex learning tasks. In the field of firms' default prediction, however, the lack of interpretability has prevented the extensive adoption of the black-box type of models. To overcome this drawback and maintain the high performances of black-boxes, this paper relies on a model-agnostic approach. Accumulated Local Effects and Shapley values are used to shape the predictors' impact on the likelihood of default and rank them according to their contribution to the model outcome. Prediction is achieved by two Machine Learning algorithms (eXtreme Gradient Boosting and FeedForward Neural Network) compared with three standard discriminant models. Results show that our analysis of the Italian Small and Medium Enterprises manufacturing industry benefits from the overall highest classification power by the eXtreme Gradient Boosting algorithm without giving up a rich interpretation framework.

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Altman, E.I., Sabato, G., Wilson, N (2010) The value of non-financial information in small and medium-sized enterprise risk management1.00083100%
2Ciampi, F., Vallini, C., Gordini, N., Benvenuti, M (2009) Are Credit Scoring Models Able to Predict Small Enterprise Default? Statistical Evidence from Italian Small Enterprises1.00073100%
3Ciampi, F., Gordini, N (2013) Small enterprise default prediction modeling through artificial neural networks: An empirical analysis of Italian small enterpri…1.00073100%
4Lin, S.M., Ansell, J., Andreeva, G (2012) Predicting default of a small business using different definitions of financial distress1.00073100%
5Apley, D.W., Zhu, J (2020) Visualizing the effects of predictor variables in black box supervised learning models1.00053100%
6Ciampi, F., Giannozzi, A., Marzi, G., Altman, E.I (2021) Rethinking SME default prediction: a systematic literature review and future perspectives0.92844100%
7Calabrese, R., Osmetti, S.A (2013) Modelling small and medium enterprise loan defaults as rare events: the generalized extreme value regression model0.92843100%
8Calabrese, R., Marra, G., Angela Osmetti, S (2016) Bankruptcy prediction of small and medium enterprises using a flexible binary generalized extreme value model0.92843100%
9Andreeva, G., Calabrese, R., Osmetti, S.A (2016) A comparative analysis of the UK and Italian small businesses using generalised extreme value models0.874142100%
10Michala, D., Grammatikos, T., Filipe, S.F (2013) Forecasting Distress in European SME Portfolios0.87452100%

Showing the top 10 of 91 scored citations.