DIGITALIZATION, FINANCIAL INSOLVENCY AND BANKRUPTCY RISK FORECASTING OF BULGARIAN AGRICULTURAL ENTERPRISES.

This paper aims to study the impact of agricultural enterprises' digitization and the performance and bankruptcy risk. Analyzing financial insolvency and predicting bankruptcy risk is a constant focus of research. Company managers and their creditors, auditors, counterparties, etc., are very interested in this issue. Many economists are constantly looking for adequate models and methods by which to establish the financial health of companies with the most significant degree of precision. This paper answers whether some of the most commonly used bankruptcy prediction models also apply in the agricultural sector. For this purpose, a study was made of the annual statistical reports of medium and large Bulgarian agricultural enterprises operating in this sector for five years. Next, the paper's authors also look for evidence that agricultural enterprises with a higher level of digitalization and application of information and communication technologies face a lower risk of bankruptcy and better performance, applying the fixed effect and probit models. The econometric analysis clearly shows a statistically significant relationship between the risk of bankruptcy and the productivity of agricultural enterprises, measured by ROA. Applying the probit model reveals a higher probability of bankruptcy for firms with lower productivity and higher leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]