An Empirical Study on the Assurance Level of Financial Statements Audit

我们已经做了四年的《关于财务报表审计保证水平的实证研究》，研究开始时，对日本影响较大的英美国家的审计业务正在显著扩张。而其中一个突出的问题就是审计的保障水平。此外，在世纪之交，我国试图使会计审计制度与国际标准接轨。然而，我国会计审计制度所处的环境发生了巨大的变化。尤其是在漫长的通货紧缩过程中，人们对独立审计的信任度不断下降。与此同时，美国对独立审计可靠性的怀疑也在以同样的方式增长。在这种情况下，我们得出的结论是，除了财务报表审计的保证水平之外，我国还存在一些我国特有的问题。其中包括：1.认识到日本对证券融资本身的认识还不成熟，认为证券融资本身的重要性应该是财务报表审计的基础，也是证券投资者保护的基础。认识到会计和审计在地方政府或国家等比证券市场更重要的部门中的重要作用，这在日本是不完善的。职业审计总体框架的确立，并不局限于财务报表审计。我们相信，对于会计职业的独立验证，目前我国强烈要求扩张，尽管一个共同的批评心态本身在起步阶段不可能不发生巨大变化，但从新的角度进行基础的理论研究是可以完成的，这为新的视角提供了坚实的基础。

We have done "A Positive Research about the Assurance Level in the Audit of Financial Statements" for four years.When this research started, audit business in Anglo-American countries, which has a great influence to Japan, was remarkably expanding. And one of the leading issues was the assurance level of the audit.Moreover our country tried to draw accounting and auditing system to the global standard level at the turning point of the century.However the environment that was surrounded the accounting and auditing system of our country has dramatically changed. Especially the trust to it degraded in the long process of the deflation.At the same time a doubt for the reliability of the independent audit grew in the same way in America. That doubt wiped away one of the huge accounting firms from this world at last and American government produced a new law for preventing corporate fraud.In these circumstances we reached the conclusion that we have some issues peculiar to our country besides the assurance level of the audit of financial statements.Some of them are as follows ;1. The recognition of the immaturity of the Japanese way of thinking about both importance of the securities financing itself which should be the base of the audit of financial statements and the securities investors protection.2. The recognition of the important role of accounting and auditing in more important sectors such as the local government or the country than the securities market, which is imperfect in Japan.3. The establishment of the general framework of the professional audit, which isn't confined only for the audit of financial statements.We believe that the fundamental research which gives a strong base from the new point of view could be accomplished concerning the independent verification by the accounting profession that expansion is strongly asked in our county now, though a common critical mind itself in the start moment could not but change greatly.