The main purpose of this study is to develop a bankruptcy prediction model for the small business firm. Data was collected from the Dallas Small Business Administration (SBA), making this study specific to its decision makers. Existing research has produced models which predominately use financial ratios and information measures either independently or combined, and a few research models have used economic trends. This study varies from past studies in that it includes regional economic variables from the states of Texas. A sample of three-year data for 138 firms included fifteen bankrupt firms. This proportion of bankrupt/nonbankrupt firms approximates the proportion of repayed/defaulted loans in the SBA. Stepwise regression, set at the .15 level of significance, reduced a total of fifty-three variables to nine. These nine variables were then used to test twelve predictive models. All twelve models tested improved the SBA repayment rate and only two of the twelve would have caused the SBA to deny loans to applicants who eventually repaid. The study determined the model that included financial ratios, information measures, and Texas economic variables as best. It was also demonstrated that some of the variables used in this model could be eliminated without decreasing the predictive power …

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of determining the role of personality in information acquisition and utilization during the decision-making process, by replicating the Schkade-Scarborough box design and the Kernan-Mojena chip design, using an expanded battery of psychological tests. This investigation seeks to accomplish the following objectives: (1) review and summarize the present literature which relates personality and binary decision behavior; (2) review and summarize the present literature which relates personality with information transmission and utilization; (3) administer the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (NMPI), the Gordon Personal Inventory (GPI), the Gordon Personal Profile (GPP), EAS j, and LA1S0 to a group of subjects who will also participate in both the box and the chip experimental designs; (4) replicate both the box and the chip experimental designs with a different set of subjects to test for consistency of findings; (5) perform canonical analysis on the box design, endeavoring to extend and refine the analysis of the data; and (6) compare the findings from the box and chip experimental designs, and identify areas for further research. The purpose of this study is twofold. The first is to replicate and test the research findings of Schkade-Scarborough and Kernan-Mojena, which …