This paper investigates whether auditors' year-to-year modification to risks of material misstatements (RMMs) in extended auditors' reports (EARs) are associated with changes in underlying audit effort, as proxied by changes in audit fees. We examine the dynamics of RMMs over time in terms of adding or dropping specific RMMs. Our main results show that, on average, audit fees increase more from the previous year's fees when more RMMs are added to the current year's EAR. This increase is partially offset by dropping RMMs that were disclosed in the previous year, but changes in audit fees are not significantly affected by dropping RMMs without adding new RMMs. Further analysis suggests the effect of added RMMs is attributable to “new” RMMs originating with the auditor and that added RMMs that were previously known, based on related disclosures in the prior year's audit committee report, do not significantly impact on changes in audit fees. Overall, our results suggest that changes in the choice of RMMs included in EARs reflect changes in underlying audit effort.

本文调查了审计师对扩展审计报告（EAR）中重大错报（RMM）风险的逐年修改是否与基础审计工作的变化（如审计费用的变化）相关联。我们根据添加或删除特定RMM的时间来检查RMM的动态。我们的主要结果表明，当本年度的EAR中添加了更多RMM时，平均而言，审计费用会比上一年度的费用增加更多。上一年披露的RMM的减少部分抵消了这一增加，但是在不添加新RMM的情况下删除RMM不会显着影响审计费用的变化。进一步的分析表明，添加的RMM的影响可归因于源自审核员的“新” RMM，以及先前已知的添加的RMM，根据上一年度审计委员会报告中的有关披露，对审计费用的变动不会产生重大影响。总体而言，我们的结果表明，EAR中包含的RMM选择的变化反映了基础审计工作的变化。