This study is conducted to investigate the prediction of corporate financial distress based on the Merton (1974) market-based Distance to Default (DD) model over the period from 1997 to 2016 which covers a range of economic financial circumstances, including the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) and Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The study focusses on the six largest countries in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), comprising of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Unlike previous studies which focus mainly on bankruptcy, this paper focusses on early warning distress indicators that signal distress well before bankruptcy. This is when firms experience difficulty in servicing debt as measured by interest coverage ratio (ICR) at a firm level and non-performing loans (NPLs) at a country level. Key empirical findings from this paper indicate that the market-based distance-to-default (DD) model is generally a good early warning indicator of financial distress in the following year, particularly for ICR, but that prediction accuracy varies between individual countries in the Southeast Asian region.

这项研究的目的是基于默顿（1974）基于市场的违约距离（DD）模型在1997年至2016年期间调查公司财务困境的预测，该模型涵盖了包括亚洲金融危机在内的一系列经济金融环境。 （AFC）和全球金融危机（GFC）。该研究的重点是东盟经济共同体（AEC）的六个最大国家，其中包括印度尼西亚，马来西亚，菲律宾，新加坡，泰国和越南。与以前的主要研究破产的研究不同，本文着眼于预警求救指标，这些指标在破产之前就已经发出了求救信号。在这种情况下，根据公司的利息覆盖率（ICR）和国家/地区的不良贷款（NPL）衡量，公司在偿还债务方面遇到困难。