Douglas Skinner

Douglas J. Skinner is Deputy Dean for Faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting. He is a leading expert in corporate disclosure practices, corporate financial reporting, and corporate payout policy.

Skinner joined the Booth faculty in 2005. He has served as Deputy Dean for Faculty since 2015 and served as Interim Dean in 2016-17. He was responsible for the construction and financing of the University’s Hong Kong campus, the home of Booth’s EMBA program in Asia, completed in 2018. Prior to joining Chicago Booth, Skinner served on the faculty of the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.

Skinner is an independent trustee and chairs the audit committee for Harbor Funds and ETF Trust, a mutual fund and ETF complex that offers a variety of actively-managed mutual fund and ETF products. From time to time he serves as an expert financial economist in litigation involving complex accounting, anti-trust, securities, and tax matters.

Skinner holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics with first class honors in Accounting and Finance from Macquarie University in Sydney and a master’s degree and PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Rochester.

Skinner’s research addresses a variety of topics in financial accounting, auditing, and corporate finance, focusing on the capital markets/valuation effects of firms’ financial policies. His research is published in leading academic journals including the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics.

Skinner previously served as editor of the Journal of Accounting Research and the Journal of Accounting and Economics, both top tier academic accounting journals.

Skinner has extensive experience teaching in Booth’s MBA, EMBA, Executive Education, and PhD programs. He currently teaches Managerial Accounting in Booth’s EMBA program and Empirical Research Methods in Booth’s PhD program. He has previously taught Corporate Finance and Valuation, Financial Accounting, and Financial Statement Analysis. He has advised PhD students who have taken faculty positions at Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, MIT, Wharton, Stanford, London Business School, among other top schools around the world.

Research Interests

• Corporate financial reporting and disclosure practice; corporate payout policy.

Academic Areas

• Accounting

Publications

"Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Bad News," Journal of Accounting Research (1994).

"Earnings Disclosures and Stockholder Lawsuits," Journal of Accounting and Economics (1997).

With Richard Sloan, "Earnings Surprises, Growth Expectations, and Stock Returns or Don't Let an Earnings Torpedo Sink Your Portfolio," Review of Accounting Studies (2002).

With Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo, "Are Dividends Disappearing? Dividend Concentration and the Consolidation of Earnings," Journal of Financial Economics (2004).

With Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo, “Corporate Payout Policy,” Foundations and Trends in Finance (2008).