This paper reports the results of an experiment that examined the eects of audit experience and explicit fraud risk
assessment instructions on the eectiveness of analytical procedures in detecting ®nancial statement fraud. The results
of this study suggest that audit managers are more eective than audit seniors in assessing the risk of fraud with analytical
procedures. Additionally, explicit fraud risk assessment instructions resulted in more eective assessments of the
presence of fraud. These results have implications for the assignment of auditors to tasks and the structuring of these
tasks. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.