Competing Risks Models for an Enterprises Duration on the Market

Research background: Enterprises are an important element of the economy, which explains that the analysis of their duration on the market is an important and willingly undertaken research topic. In the case of complex problems like this, considering only one type of event, which ends the duration, is often insufficient for full understanding.

Purpose: In this paper there is an analysis of the duration of enterprises on the market, taking into account various reasons for the termination of their business activity as well as their characteristics.

Research methodology: A survival analysis can be used to study duration on the market. However, the possibility of considering the waiting time for only one type of event is its important limitation. One solution is to use competing risks. Various competing risks models (naive Kaplan-Meier estimator, subdistribution model, subhazard and cause-specific hazard) are presented and compared with an indication of their advantages and weakness.

Results: The competing risks models are estimated to investigate the impact of the causes of an enterprises liquidation on duration distribution. The greatest risk concerns enterprises with a natural person as the owner (regardless of the reason of failure). For each of the competing risks, it is also indicated that there is a section of activity which adversely affects the ability of firms to survive on the market.

Novelty: A valuable result is considering the reasons for activity termination in the duration analysis for enterprises from the Mazowieckie Voivodeship.