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Ontario Tech acknowledges the lands and people of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation.

We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

Learn more about Indigenous Education and Cultural Services

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Karolina Krystyniak
PhD, CFA

Graduate Program Director MFDA

Assistant Professor

Finance

Faculty of Business and Information Technology

Contact information

Business and Information Technology Building - Room 3004
North Oshawa
2000 Simcoe Street North
Oshawa, ON L1G 0C5

905.721.8668 ext. 5372

karolina.krystyniak@ontariotechu.ca
karolinakrystyniak.com

Research topics

  • institutional trading
  • investor attention
  • stock market anomalies
  • market liquidity
  • market sentiment
  • empirical asset pricing
  • capital structure

Background

Dr.  Karolina Krystyniak is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Ontario Tech University. She holds a PhD in Finance from Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). Her research interests span a diverse range of topics including credit rating standards and capital structure, institutional investors’ informed trading, investor behaviour and attention, and cryptocurrencies. Her research has been published in top peer-reviewed journals and presented at numerous prestigious international conferences.

Her teaching philosophy is centered around ensuring equal opportunities for all students by implementing appropriate accommodations, emphasizing universal design for learning principles, and extensively using experiential learning tools.

Dr. Krystyniak is a CFA® charterholder; before her academic career she worked in many top international consulting companies. She is currently involved in promoting the CFA Charter among Ontario Tech University students and strengthening the program’s relationship with CFA Society.

For years, Dr. Krystyniak has dedicated her community and professional service efforts to championing equity and inclusion, actively participating in both formal and informal advocacy for individuals with disabilities.

Education

  • PhD, Finance Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY
  • CFA Charterholder
  • Master of Economics with Major in Finance and Banking Warsaw School of Economics (SGH), Warsaw, Poland
  • Bachelor of Business Administration with first-class Honours in Accounting St. Francis Xavier University, Canada

Courses taught

  • Finance
  • Financial Econometrics
  • Principles of Finance
  • Corporate Finance
  • Equity Asset Analysis
  • Managerial Finance
  • Investments (graduate course)

Research and expertise

  • Institutional investors' trading behaviour
  • Investor attention
  • Informed trading
  • Market liquidity
  • Market sentiment
  • Credit ratings
  • Cryptocurrencies
  • SSHRC Small Research Grant, Ontario Tech University, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Institutional Grant program (with Amir Akbari) - $7,000 for the project “Arranged Marriage of Real Estate and Equity Markets; Government Real Estate market interventions and their impact on the Canadian equity market."

  •  Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) – Insight Development Grant 2021: Stock-level investor sentiment and attention during the coronavirus pandemic. Principal Investigator. $42,204

  • "The myth of tightening credit rating standards in the market for corporate debt" with Viktoriya Staneva, Journal of Banking and Finance (2024)
  • "Blockchain Transaction Fee and Ethereum Merge" with Archana Jain and Chinmay Jain, Finance Research Letters (2023)
  • “Is This Rating Worth It? The Benefits of Credit Ratings in the Dynamic Tradeoff Model” with Viktoriya Staneva, International Journal of Managerial Finance (2023)
  • "Government Real Estate Interventions and the Stock Market" with Amir Akbari, International Review of Financial Analysis (2021), SSHRC Small Research Grant
  • “Investor attention and mergers and acquisitions” with Hongqi Liu, Journal of Behavioral Finance (2020)
  • “Liquidity shocks and institutional trading” with Lin Peng and Xi Dong, European Finance Association (2018)
  • “What’s trending? Stock-level investor sentiment and returns” with Hongqi Liu, SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2021)
  • "Executive gender and capital structure: new evidence from rebalancing events" with Viktoriya Staneva (2024), under review
  • "Conservatism in credit ratings - real or perceived? Evidence from stock returns" with Viktoriya Staneva (2023), under review
  • "Institutional investor trading and attention" with Lin Peng, Xi Dong and Hongqi Liu

Involvement

  • Conference presentations
    • The Eastern Finance Association, St. Petersburg, Florida, 2024
    • The Southwestern Finance Association, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2024
    • The Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics 11th Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, 2018
    • Behavioural Finance Working Group conference, London, U.K., 2018
    • European Finance Association, Warsaw, Poland, 2018
    • FBIT Research Seminar Series, Ontario Tech University, 2018
    • Baruch College Seminar Series, 2017
    • China International Conference in Finance, Xiamen, China, 2016 (by coauthor)
    • Midwest Finance Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 2016
    • Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting, Captiva Island, Florida, 2015
    • Financial Management Association Annual Meeting, Orlando, Florida, 2015
    • Financial Management Association European Doctoral Student Consortium, Venice, Italy, 2015