Transparency in the transparency reports: Empirical evidence from Portugal.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to analyze the degree of transparency reports (TR) transparency and its relation with the audit firm size, fees, either from audit services, or from other services, and with the human capital. Design/methodology: In this study we considered 282 audit firms, and our final sample includes 268 transparency reports from 2013 through 2017. For the period under analysis, audit firms financial information, human resources information and TR were collected. TR report information was divided in four types of information: Mandatory Information I, Mandatory Information II, Voluntary Information and Extra Information. These indexes measure the fulfillment of each information on the total of information considered in each index. Non-parametric tests were applied to analyze the behavior of each index for the different years, whereas the Generalized Linear Models were performed to study the impact of various factors on each disclosure index. Findings: Our results show a high level of transparency regarding Mandatory Information I, but a lower accomplishment regarding all other information. In general, the auditor experience, the number of auditors, the number of clients that are public-interest entities (PIE) and the percentage of extra audit services have a significant impact on the information disclosed in the TR. Originality/value: Our paper contributes to the current literature by assessing the influence that human capital has on the information disclosed in the transparency reports, also it covers a 5-year period and the compliance with the new disclosures added by Regulation No. 537/2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]