An agent-based simulation model of enterprises financial distress for the enterprise of different life cycle stage

This paper proposes a new agent-based simulation model to simulate the causes and processes of enterprise financial distress. The general framework of the model including four agents, which are enterprise, product, bank and macro environment is described. By investigating the different causes of financial distress in enterprise’s different life cycle stages, we implement the simulation model to four specific cases which belong to start-up, growth, mature and decline life cycle stages respectively. Then a comparative analysis between our simulation results and real situation in four proposed specific cases is conducted, demonstrating that the proposed simulation model is a promising tool for comprehensively analyzing the causes and processes of financial distress.