Oksana Smirnova champions change in global finance

Oksana Smirnova | Assistant Professor | Dyson School

Meet Oksana Smirnova, one of our newest faculty members to join the Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business. Smirnova earned her Ph.D. from London Business School, where she specialized in household finance and empirical asset pricing.

Her research expertise that she brings to the  to the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics examines how institutional frameworks, such as pension plan design, influence individual financial behavior. Smirnova says she focuses on stock market participation, portfolio allocation, and the role of frictions in shaping investment decisions.

Before starting her Ph.D., she worked on research projects in corporate finance, including studies on intellectual capital and ownership rights protection. Smirnova also contributed to research at the intersection of business and government, particularly on financial inclusion, which deepened her understanding of the policy relevance of financial decisions.

Smirnova’s training combines strong econometric skills with experience working with large-scale administrative and survey datasets. She is passionate about using data to inform economic theory and connecting academic research with real-world policy and market applications.

What is a research paper that is important to you, your work, or the world at large?

“My job market paper, ‘Learning About the Stock Market: Asset Allocation Spillovers from Defined Contribution Pension Plan Access,’ is particularly meaningful to me because it quantifies how institutional access to financial products can transform individual behavior far beyond the retirement domain. By exploiting exogenous variation in DC plan eligibility in Sweden, I show that stock market participation increases, and that even existing investors take on more risk in their portfolios. These changes are not driven by wealth or risk preferences alone, but rather by reductions in informational participation costs consistent with financial learning. This work matters because it reframes pension policy not just as a savings tool, but as a powerful mechanism for improving financial inclusion and literacy. It bridges theoretical models of participation costs and empirical asset allocation dynamics, and has implications for designing systems that enable broader access to financial markets.”

What is a current issue in business or business education that you are interested in, and why is it important to you and your work?

“One current issue that resonates with my work is the persistent gap in financial market participation among households,” Smirnova says. “Despite decades of market democratization, many individuals, particularly those with lower income or education, remain outside of equity market investments. This matters not just for individual wealth accumulation, but also for inequality, retirement security, and the aggregate efficiency of capital markets. My research contributes to this discussion by showing that participation costs are not purely financial. Households often lack confidence, literacy, or institutional nudges to enter the market. Policies like DC pension plans can have spillovers by providing exposure and encouraging learning.”

“As a result, financial education may be more effective when embedded in practical, decision-relevant contexts,” she says. “From a business education perspective, this suggests we should focus not only on theoretical instruction, but also on hands-on experiences and behavioral insights that help bridge the gap between knowledge and action.”