We consider how auditors assess the risk of fraudulent financial reporting and plan their audit where a possibly fraudulent auditee anticipates the assessment and planning process. The auditor uses the auditee's (possibly fraudulent) earnings report to revise his beliefs about the likelihood of fraud when formulating an audit plan.
We find that as underlying earnings increase, a fraudulent auditee increases reported earnings. In turn, as the auditee's reported earnings increase, the auditor increases audit effort. We also find that the auditee (who knows the auditor will use the report for audit planning) selects reports that increase his own expected payoff, relative to reports he would select if the auditor did not observe the report before finalizing the audit plan. By contrast, the auditor is no better off using the auditee's report for audit planning. Inherent risk, detection risk, and overall audit risk can increase when the auditor uses the auditee's report. Thus, because of the dynamic interaction between the auditor and auditee, procedures that aid in assessing audit risk may not reduce that risk or result in more efficient audits.
