engleski

E-Transparency of Croatian Banks: Determinants and Disclosure Contents

Banks are the most important financial intermediaries and major providers of institutionalized loan financing in the economic systems worldwide. Externalities from their activities are pervading deeply in the economy. Therefore, regulation of their behaviour is of exceptional importance for the general public. In addition, national and supranational prudential authorities request various forms and extents of mandatory disclosure. Nevertheless, voluntary disclosure is being recognized by the banks as a mechanism of asymmetric expectations’ reduction and confidence enhancement of current and potential both shareholders and stakeholders. An upgrade of information availability and update of its quality might be a useful way of reducing probability for systemic banking crisis appearance as well as for market discipline improvement. However, the causes and consequences of banks’ voluntary disclosure of accounting and other information are still challengeable issues in financial literature. In such a manner, the purpose of the paper is to explore the determinants of Croatian banks’ online disclosure of financial information. Bank specific and industry specific factors of voluntary disclosure are being empirically examined using univariate and multivariate statistical methods. Furthermore, research objective is also to compare on the volume and structure of voluntary disclosed information using content analysis in the period of financial stability and economic crisis. Among other, it is expected that banks with higher transparency achieve significantly better financial performance. However, the consequences whether benefits or drawbacks of voluntary disclosure are not being explored. For all the aforementioned reasons the paper might be useful to academicians, economic students and most of all to the general public, especially depositors as major providers of bank funds.

voluntary disclosure; banking sector; financial reporting; accounting information; Croatia

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