Final answer:
An audit provides reasonable assurance for detecting material illegal acts such as fraudulent financial reporting, which includes activities that materially misstate financial documents. Although fair housing audits and other audit studies are mentioned, they serve different purposes than financial audits.
Step-by-step explanation:
An audit provides reasonable assurance for the detection of material illegal acts that are relevant to the financial statements. Among the options provided, an audit is most likely to provide reasonable assurance for detecting fraudulent financial reporting. This would include activities such as the misstatement of financial documents, embezzlement of funds, or other forms of financial fraud that would impact the financial statements of the company. Petty theft, traffic violations, and vandalism do not directly relate to the financial statements and therefore are less likely to be detected through the auditing process.
Considering examples of corporate crime, such as embezzlement and larceny, these are the type of illegal acts that an audit is designed to detect, provided they have a material impact on the financial reports. Fair housing audits and audit studies in different fields like education and the labor market aim to detect discriminatory practices and ensure compliance with laws, but these are different from the traditional financial audit context.