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This paper aims to examine the market risk disclosure practices of large Italian banks. The contribution provides insights on the way banks should provide information about market risk. The problem related to the asymmetric information between banks from one side, and investors and stakeholders on the other, represents a crucial issue that requires further considerations by scholars and regulators.

This contribution adopts a mixed methodological approach to analyse both qualitative and quantitative profiles of market risk disclosure in banking. This paper analyses the most important documents Italian banks are required to prepare for risk disclosure purposes, namely the management commentary, the Basel Pillar 3 disclosure report and the notes.

The results show that banks do not fully exploit the potentialities of management commentary and Pillar 3 disclosure report. Various areas of information overlapping between the different financial reports worsen the overall comprehensibility and relevance of bank risk reporting.

The reduction of the information overlapping, the careful choice of the location of the information and more appropriate use of the management commentary to provide qualitative information about market risk strategies represent crucial areas of improvement banks and regulators should take into account.

Providing an in-depth analysis of the market risk disclosure practices of a sample of large Italian banks, this paper detects the main drawbacks of their market risk reporting and provides useful recommendations to improve it.

Quality Assurance and Improvement Program (QAIP) is defined as “an ongoing and periodic assessment of the entire spectrum of audit and consulting work performed by the internal audit (IA) activity”. QAIP is an important component of internal auditors’ commitment to improve internal audit (IA) quality. The pressure towards improvement is urgent for central banks, in light of the vulnerabilities of their IA functions identified by the International Monetary Fund. The authors analyse the professional standards and the literature on IA and QAIP, aiming to propose general considerations to enhance IA quality and to develop and maintain a QAIP, with reference to central banks, also shedding light on the synergies among IA, QAIP and total quality management (TQM).

This paper reviews the most relevant professional standards in light of the professional and academic literature regarding IA quality, QAIP and their relationship with TQM. The analysis of these sources represents an important step to identify general measures to improve IA quality and develop effective QAIP in central banks.

This analysis shows that it is important to understand the rationale behind the development of an IA function and its theoretical and practical foundation, especially for complex organisations such as central banks. In addition, the authors show that QAIP represents an important tool to exploit the synergies between TQM and IA. These synergies could result in higher levels of quality for the IA function and more effective implementation of TQM within the whole organisation. Lastly, the authors provide practical suggestions to support the implementation of an effective QAIP in central banks and to spread TQM philosophy within the organisation.

The authors contribute to the scant literature on IA quality and QAIP by focusing on central banks and shedding light on the relationship with TQM. Regardless of their importance, these topics have been largely neglected by the extant literature.

This paper aims to analyse the implementation challenges faced by internal audit departments of public sector organisations and central banks when implementing continuous auditing (CA) systems. CA aims to monitor internal control systems and risk levels on a continuous basis to support the audit process. This study identifies the implementation challenges of CA systems and proposes adequate countermeasures.

This study employs the design science information system research and the design science research process methodologies to ensure the rigor of this analysis. These research methodologies are adopted to tackle identified organisational problems and propose solutions. This methodological approach consists in the following phases: identification of the problems and motivation; definition of the objectives of the solution; research design and development; evaluation; communication.

This study detects several implementation challenges for public sector organisations and central banks and proposes adequate solutions. This study finds that these challenges are related to organisations’ complexity, institutional rigidity, potential threats to internal auditors’ independence and the issue of considering CA system as a “real time error correction” mechanism. The solutions involve the development of a business process focussed audit approach to enable internal auditors to analyse CA indicators, and the use of CA systems to support each phase of the audit process.

This study contributes to the scant strand of literature on internal auditing in central banks. Given the exceptional demand for guidance concerning internal auditing in the public sector and in central banks, this paper provides guidelines for these organisations to implement CA systems and to tackle implementation challenges. The analysis allows internal audit departments within central banks to better support their organisations in the achievement of their important regulatory and policy objectives.

This paper aims to assess the impact of regulatory changes on corporate environmental disclosure practices in Europe. More specifically, the authors perform a difference-in-differences analysis to study the impact of the Paris agreement (United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21) and of the French Law 2015-992 on energy transition for green growth.

The sample consists of the listed companies belonging to the Euro Stoxx 50 index, and they are analysed over the 2010–2019 time horizon by means of an expert validated environmental disclosure dictionary and difference-in-differences analysis.

The main results show that both regulatory interventions contributed to improving corporate environmental disclosure. The authors also show that firms belonging to the most polluting sectors tend to provide more information on environmental matters, likely in an attempt to divert stakeholders’ attention.

By analysing an under-investigated topic, the paper calls for significant efforts by regulators to find the most suitable solutions to induce firms to increase their levels of transparency on the impact of environmental risks and on how these risks are managed.