Regulators have expressed concerns that investors misunderstand auditors’ responsibility to “read and consider” other information in the annual report (e.g., the MD&A), often assuming the entire annual report has been audited. This is particularly a concern in the U.S. where auditors do...

We study environmental and social (E&S) disclosures in annual reports. Using the word embedding model to examine more than 210,000 annual reports from 24,271 public firms in 30 international countries/regions between 2001 and 2020, we create an E&S dictionary that allows us to document trends in...

This study investigates board characteristics, including board leadership structure, which explain the human capital disclosure (HCD) provided by companies. It uses a self-constructed disclosure index to quantify the level of human capital information using content analysis. Generalized method...

Corporate governance reports (CGR) and annual reports are two fundamental corporate documents disseminated to shareholders about the companies' financial condition and operation. While the annual reports could be seen as outside appearance, the CGR reflects internal processes that an entity...