Effects Of A Decision Aid For The Assessment Of Fraudulent Financial Reporting: An Application Of SAS No. 82

Abstract

The Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No.82, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit, requires the auditor to assess the risk of material misstatement due to a fraud and to consider the assessment in designing appropriate audit procedures to be performed. The SAS No. 82 has thus explicitly made the detection of material fraud the auditor’s responsibility. The purpose of the study is to use the risk factors identified in SAS No. 82 as the foundation to develop a decision aid to help auditors assess the likelihood of fraudulent financial reporting and to empirically test the effects of the decision aid on assessing the likelihood of fraudulent financial reporting. Using a sample of 45 fraud engagements and 206 nonfraud engagements, we developed and tested a logistic regression model that estimates the likelihood of fraudulent financial reporting. We found that the logistic model (proxied as a decision aid in the study) outperforms the practicing auditors in assessing risk for fraud and nonfraud cases.