This paper shows the existence of extreme types of zombie firm, i.e. companies with negative equity that continue to do business despite having lost their entire equity. We explain how these firms are measured and how the riskier ones are defined with different determinants. Using a Spanish sample from 2010 to 2014 an index called the EZIndex is developed that includes four dimensions of the extreme zombie problem: extension, contagion, recovery signs and immediacy. The paper contributes to zombie theory on the one hand by developing a method for ranking zombie firms based on risks and changes over time, and on the other hand by using a log-linear model to detect the riskiest corporate profiles out of all these risky firms. It demonstrates significant implications that need to be considered by the competent authorities not only in terms of their impact as a whole but also in regard to the particular profile of extreme zombie firms: they are less regulated, large and located in regions with large business fabrics.
Businesses in technical bankruptcy are part of the European context, many of them in such financial distress that they have lost all their equity and a very high percentage of them have even incurred negative equity. There is a very little literature analysing these companies; moreover, they are considered as out of the ordinary because they do not fit into conventional theories of business, and are removed from most samples. They are largely neglected. The research questions posed here are a step towards remedying this: "What are the scale and the economic impact of negative equity companies in terms of risk transference?", "Does this problem differ from one European country to another?", "Is it an effect of the crisis?".Using the Bureau Van Dijk's Amadeus database, we find that nearly 20% of companies have negative equity. Such companies handle more than one billion Euros, i.e. nearly 10% of European GDP. So the results suggest that negative equity companies have a high weight in Europe and, based on the country cluster studied, it seems that neither culture nor geographical area is determinant in explaining their distribution across countries. Nor is the crisis a determinant in explaining their existence, so the problem is not cyclical but structural.These findings have potentially important implications in encouraging European decision makers to factor such companies into their policies and to include them in economic models.
RESUMENExiste una creciente preocupación de la sociedad sobre el valor social que se genera o destruye a través de la actividad económica; en el caso de las licitaciones públicas no sólo deberían valorarse los aspectos económicos sino también los sociales. En este trabajo se identifica la problemática vinculada a dicha valoración, se identifican el conjunto de variables implicadas en el valor de los outputs generados, y se propone un modelo que integre valores complementarios al económico. Los cuales se identificarían mediante cuatro fuentes complementarias de información sobre el valor generado: distribución del valor económico, valor social específico, inclusión del riesgo potencial, y valor emocional. Asimismo, se propone que a largo plazo la opción más eficiente consistiría en desarrollar y homogeneizar una contabilidad social para el conjunto de organizaciones.
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