Tomasz Korol
pages: 22-35; JEL classification: A10, D22, E17, G01; Keywords: financial crisis, bankruptcy causes, phases of financial crisis, fuzzy logic; Abstract: This article is devoted to the issue of assessing the causes of business failure. The presented studies answer two research questions – what are the causes of corporate bankruptcies in Poland and how to more effectively predict the scale of bankruptcies in the country. The author has conducted a study to analyze the specific endogenous and exogenous causes of company bankruptcy depending on the type of the bankruptcy with consideration of the three different phases of the crisis in enterprises. The research is based on 185 companies (60 bankrupt and 125 non-bankrupt firms) listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. For each company the author has calculated 14 different financial ratios for each of the six years before classifying the firm as bankrupt or non-bankrupt.