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 otherservices, and with the human capital.Design/methodology: In this study we considered 282 audit firms, and our final sample includes 268transparency reports from 2013 through 2017. For the period under analysis, audit firms financialinformation, human resources information and TR were collected. TR report information was dividedin four types of information: Mandatory Information I, Mandatory Information II, VoluntaryInformation and Extra Information. These indexes measure the fulfillment of each information on thetotal of information considered in each index. Non-parametric tests were applied to analyze thebehavior of each index for the different years, whereas the Generalized Linear Models were performedto study the impact of various factors on each disclosure index.Findings: Our results show a high level of transparency regarding Mandatory Information I, but alower accomplishment regarding all other information. In general, the auditor experience, the numberof auditors, the number of clients that are public-interest entities (PIE) and the percentage of extraaudit 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 thathuman capital has on the information disclosed in the transparency reports, also it covers a 5-year periodand the compliance with the new disclosures added by Regulation No. 537/2014Peer Reviewe