Douglas J Skinner

Professor Douglas J Skinner

BEcon (First Class Honours), Accounting/Finance, Macquarie University
MS Applied Economics, University of Rochester
PhD, Accounting (major area), Finance (minor area), University of Rochester

Douglas Skinner is a leading expert in corporate disclosure practices, corporate financial reporting, and corporate finance, with a focus on payout policy. His research addresses topics such as:

• the causes and capital market effects of managers' corporate disclosure choices (especially forward-looking information, including earnings forecasts, earnings pre-announcements, and guidance, corporate conference calls, etc.);
• how the legal and regulatory environment affects managers’ corporate disclosures;
• managers' incentives to use their discretion in the financial accounting and reporting process to manage reported accounting earnings ("earnings management");
• how stock prices respond to earning releases, especially for high growth companies ("earnings torpedoes"); and
• the determinants of firms' payout policies, including whether and how much firms should pay out, the form of payout (dividends versus stock repurchases), etc.

Professor Skinner’s research is published in prominent accounting and finance journals, including The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Business, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics. He is co-editor of the Journal of Accounting Research, and was previously co-editor of the Journal of Accounting and Economics.

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