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The purpose of this paper is to analyse if citizens’ searches on the internet coincide with the services that municipal websites offer. In addition, the authors examine municipal webpage rankings in search engines and the factors explaining them.

The empirical study, conducted through a sample of Spanish city councils, contrasted if the information that can be found on a municipal website fits with citizens’ demands. This has been done by comparing the most-searched keywords with the contents of municipal websites.

A positive relationship between the supply and demand of municipal information on the internet has been found, but much can still be improved. Analysed administrations rank the basic data of the organisation, as well as some of the fundamental competences thereof, at the top in search engines, but the results are not entirely effective with some keywords still highly demanded by citizens, such as those related to employment or tourism. Factors explaining internet ranking include the number of pages of the municipal website, its presence in social networks and an indicator designed to measure the difficulty of ranking the municipal place-name.

The results obtained from this study provide valuable information for municipal managers. Municipal websites should not only include information in which citizens are interested, but achieve accessibility standards, have a responsive web design, and follow the rules of web usability. Additionally, they should be findable, which also requires improvement in terms of the design of the municipal website thinking in search engines, particularly in terms of certain technical characteristics that improve findability. A municipal website that wants to have a good positioning should increase its contents and attain the maximum degree possible of visibility in social networks.

Many indicators attempt to measure the social performance of a company from different perspectives. Grounded in stakeholder theory, this paper aims to propose capitalising the economic value distributed annually to society over a period of time, hereafter called a firm’s cumulative contribution to society (CCS). This can be done by including everything that stakeholders value; for example, payments of taxes, remuneration of employees, payments to suppliers and creditors, donations, dividends, research and development expenses and efforts to improve the environment.

First, this paper makes a methodological proposal about how to calculate the CCS and discusses potentials and shortcomings. Then, a set of hypotheses are formulated about the firm characteristics and country attributes that make the most positive contribution to society such as business models, financial performance, a country’s human development, income equality and the extent of its shadow economy. The authors also argue that a company that originally contributes to society will continue to do so because of the structural inertia faced by organisations. The hypotheses were validated with an empirical study conducted with a sample of 9,276 new-born European companies.

The most significant contributors to society are large, profitable companies, which are leveraged but solvent, with high asset turnover and high-profit margins and which are productive and pay high wages. Unfortunately, this win-win situation describes a small percentage of the explained variance, which can explain why social and financial performance sometimes do not go hand-in-hand. The paper identifies features of other types of companies that contribute to society, suggesting criteria for socially responsible investors. Country development favours the cumulative contribution that firms make to society.

Most accounting systems do not collect all the information necessary to calculate a refined version of the indicator such as percentage of purchases from local suppliers, percentage of salaries for executives and disabled employees and percentage of financing from socially responsible financial entities. The authors encourage modification of the accounting systems to include those aspects.

This paper identifies several types of companies that contribute the most to society from a modest set of financial indicators. Socially responsible investors can estimate their contribution to society, devising new investment criteria.

The paper identifies several types of companies that contribute the most to society from a modest set of financial indicators. Socially responsible investors can estimate their contribution to society, devising new investment criteria.

The paper makes two contributions, one methodological and the other empirical. By applying a financial methodology, the authors propose to capitalise the contributions of a company over a period of time. The empirical study identifies both firm and country characteristics that explain CCS.

This paper aims to present research on how and why microfinance institutions (MFIs) disclose financial and social information on the internet. Legitimacy theory provides the theoretical framework.

The empirical study analysed factors influencing MFIs to publish financial and social information on the internet. The model was tested using regression analysis. The sample consisted of publicly available data from the web sites of 273 MFIs.

The study found that MFIs' internet presence overall is scarce and that greater levels of disclosure are needed. It was found that large MFIs with a high degree of public exposure on the internet disclose greater amounts of information on their web sites than smaller MFIs with a low degree of public exposure. It was also found that for‐profit MFIs disclose more financial information on their web sites, while non‐profit non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) reveal more social information.

MFIs should be proud to tell the world what they are doing. MFI managers need to remember that transparency increases funds from donors. Donors are mostly based in developed countries, so the internet plays a key role in disclosure and attracting potential donors. Thus, managers of MFIs are encouraged to increase disclosure levels – especially on the internet.

Academic research into the factors that influence MFIs' internet disclosure is still scarce. This is an important area of study because full disclosure offers enormous benefits. Since MFIs have a social mission, they are legitimated in the eyes of their donors by disclosing social information. Since they are also financial institutions, they have to show that they use the funds they receive efficiently.

A structural equation model is proposed to explain internet reporting by banks. The model relates three constructs of financial institutions (size, financial performance, and internet visibility) to their final influence on internet information disclosure (e‐transparency).

This paper's proposed model analyses a sample of Spanish financial institutions using publicly available data. The model is tested using partial least squares.

A positive and statistically significant relationship has been found between size, financial performance, internet visibility, and e‐transparency, with direct and indirect effects. The study shows that size accounts for most of the variance. Size has a positive effect on e‐transparency, financial performance, and internet visibility. However, the direct effect of financial performance and internet visibility on e‐transparency is small.

The researchers have analysed only one year of data from one country and one sector. The direction of cause and effect assumed in the model is a logical one, but statistical methods cannot prove causality, only association. Even though any bank can disclose its financial information online for a very low cost, building a robust, interactive web site requires major resources. This gives larger banks a value added advantage.

The paper examines the relationship between size, financial performance, internet visibility and e‐transparency using a structural model. Although structural models are commonly used in many scientific disciplines, they have not yet been applied in disclosure research.

This paper discusses the identification and measurement of intangible assets in the public sector. A discussion of intellectual capital theory identifies and classifies a number of intangible assets of relevance to the public sector. Multidimensional scaling and related multivariate techniques are proposed for their detection and quantification. The methodology is illustrated with a case study: the provision of council services through the Internet by Spanish municipalities. The technique identifies three intangible assets related to external structural capital: service, image and transparency. Five strategic groups reveal the different objectives, strategic use of the Internet, and actions taken by the various Spanish councils.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research that models factors that favour the extension of e‐government. Hypotheses were proposed regarding the role of municipal resources, politicians and environment as elements that stimulate e‐government. It aims to argue that larger municipalities have more resources available to implement technological initiatives, that politicians receptive to the use of technology to communicate with citizens encourage e‐government, and that the local environment, as measured by citizens' wealth and business activity, is influential.

The proposed model was tested using data from 92 Spanish city councils. A structural equation model, estimated using partial least squares, was employed as an analysis technique.

The data supported the model, emphasising that municipal resources are the most important factor.

The researchers analysed only one year of data from one country.

The model suggested can be used to improve policy‐making and practice. The paper includes a brief case study of the Saragossa City Council, one of the leading councils in Spain, with regard to e‐government initiatives.

Many recent papers have studied factors explaining the extension of e‐government. These studies have analysed the influence of each of the factors separately. Here a structural equation model is proposed that allows analysis of the effects of various factors jointly. The variables employed have been modelled as latent variables, since it is shown that this is the most appropriate way to represent the complex reality of e‐government.

Online transparency has become a tool to increase legitimacy and trust in governments. The purpose of this paper is to study the online transparency of Spanish Central Government agencies and analyze whether their corporate governance (CG) structures influence their online transparency.

The information used for building an online transparency index and about the board of directors has been collected from the websites of the 168 agencies and from their statutes and activity reports. Ordinary least squares analysis is used. Based on a previous literature review and the requirements of the EU Directive and Spanish legislation, 108 items included in the websites have been analyzed.

The average information displayed through the website agencies is significantly less than the information considered as relevant in previous literature and in the Spanish legislation. The highest values are presented by the technical dimensions and the lowest by the organizational/political dimension. The presence of independent directors and women on the boards of directors are revealed as the most important explanatory factors of online transparency.

Practical implications to improve online transparency are related to the organizational/political dimension – including the positions and CVs of members of governing bodies, minutes, etc. and to the presence of independent directors and, to a lesser extent, of women, on the board of directors.

The contribution of this paper is the identification of some online transparency determinants in public entities under the same general legal framework. This is the first paper that analyzes the relationship between online transparency and CG in public agencies.

This paper aims to present a literature review of the most recent optimisation methods applied to Credit Scoring Models (CSMs).

The research methodology employed technical procedures based on bibliographic and exploratory analyses. A traditional investigation was carried out using the Scopus, ScienceDirect and Web of Science databases. The papers selection and classification took place in three steps considering only studies in English language and published in electronic journals (from 2008 to 2022). The investigation led up to the selection of 46 publications (10 presenting literature reviews and 36 proposing CSMs).

The findings showed that CSMs are usually formulated using Financial Analysis, Machine Learning, Statistical Techniques, Operational Research and Data Mining Algorithms. The main databases used by the researchers were banks and the University of California, Irvine. The analyses identified 48 methods used by CSMs, the main ones being: Logistic Regression (13%), Naive Bayes (10%) and Artificial Neural Networks (7%). The authors conclude that advances in credit score studies will require new hybrid approaches capable of integrating Big Data and Deep Learning algorithms into CSMs. These algorithms should have practical issues considered consider practical issues for improving the level of adaptation and performance demanded for the CSMs.

The results of this study might provide considerable practical implications for the application of CSMs. As it was aimed to demonstrate the application of optimisation methods, it is highly considerable that legal and ethical issues should be better adapted to CSMs. It is also suggested improvement of studies focused on micro and small companies for sales in instalment plans and commercial credit through the improvement or new CSMs.

The economic reality surrounding credit granting has made risk management a complex decision-making issue increasingly supported by CSMs. Therefore, this paper satisfies an important gap in the literature to present an analysis of recent advances in optimisation methods applied to CSMs. The main contribution of this paper consists of presenting the evolution of the state of the art and future trends in studies aimed at proposing better CSMs.

This study aims to analyse the extent of online social responsibility (SR) information disclosure by Portuguese municipalities and to identify related determinant factors, based on Institutional Theory and Legitimacy Theories.

A content analysis was performed on webpages from 60 sampled municipalities, and an information disclosure index was created.

Descriptive statistics obtained indicate the Total Disclosure Index (TDI) value was 0.46. The Economic Information sub-category exhibits the highest value (0.66), followed by the Social and Environmental Information categories (0.61 and 0.36, respectively).

The multivariate analysis results indicate that LA21 implementation the existence of tax burdens, the characterisation of a municipality as urban and environmental/SR certification application positively influence SR information disclosure. TDI is negatively affected by the existence of an inactive population (i.e. by the percentage of individuals ≤19 and ≥65 years of age).

This study aims at determining the portfolio value at risk (VAR) and market value of Fintech firms and compare it with their counterparts.

By using on a dataset from 46 countries between 2009 and 2018, the authors use five measures of VaR to investigate their empirical dynamics in relation with the market value of Fintech and non-Fintech companies.

The empirical results indicate that Fintech firms' portfolios have a higher financial risk and a higher market value in comparison to non-fintech firms' portfolios. Furthermore, the authors also report that the Fintech firm portfolios experience more financial risk regardless of the holding period as long-term (one year) or short-term (quarter).

There are some limitations in this research. This research does not segregate Fintech firms into their different types of services, such as direct financial investment services, loan provision services, insurance services (InsurTech), etc. The authors only aggregate the Fintech firms by country and region. Future research may consider analysing Fintech firms by differentiating the kind of financial services they offer

Given the importance of their market value, the results imply that Fintech companies might contribute significantly to financial fluctuations in case of large variations of the market. In terms of policy recommendation, this observation requires a particular attention from the regulatory bodies who need to find the best economic balance between promoting innovation/financial technology and regulating the Fintech companies.

This paper is the first study clarifying the relation of financial risk and market value for the Fintech firms, using the large enough database to obtain significant results. This article implies that Fintech companies require a robust risk management framework