Honesty preferences and audit policy

This study examines how preferences for honesty affect two-period audit policy. We categorize the audited as either fully honest (i.e. the ethical) or self-interested and rational (i.e. the economic) to deal with the issue of audit policy. As a result, we find the conditional audit policy will be an optimal audit policy only if the incentive for the economic to cheat is sufficiently large and the proportion of the ethical in all audited is relatively moderate,. Otherwise, the conditional audit policy will be dominated by other audit policy. These results suggest that firms are likely able to design a more efficient audit policy if they take into account the honesty preferences of the audited.