Biography
Oksana Doherty is a first class honours graduate of Waterford Institute of Technology. Oksana first joined the School of Business at Waterford Institute of Technology in 2009 and has subsequently completed the MBS in Economics and Finance. She was awarded the WIT Best Paper Award in 2012. Between 2012 and 2013 Oksana worked as a fund administrator at the Bank of New York Mellon. After completing her contract with the Bank of New York Mellon, Oksana re-joined the School of Business at WIT on a sponsored PhD programme with the scholarship award from the AIB Centre for Finance and Business Research. Over her career, Oksana has primarily taught on undergraduate level, lecturing in Economics & Finance.
Oksana's main research interests include primarily the area of behavioural finance and financial markets. Her doctoral study, named “Pricing of new offers in IPO clusters”, is focused on informational cascades in IPO markets and behavioural aspects of pricing of the new issues. Her supervisors are Dr. Cormac O’Keefe and Prof. William Forbes.
Oksana initially gained some teaching experience through her employment as a teacher of English, French and Russian at the Centre of Foreign Languages in Yekaterinburg, Russia, before coming to Ireland.
Whilst undertaking her PhD she has taught Statistics and Economics on a number of undergraduate courses.
Research topic
Pricing of new offers in Initial Public Offering (IPO) clusters.
Research Overview
The aim of the research is to investigate the information cascades and clustering in the Initial Public Offering (IPO) markets and empirically test the implications of the Model of Observational Learning introduced by Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer, and Welch (1992).
In a perfectly rational world of capital markets, companies go public because they need access to capital. In the real world, IPOs are often packaged and marketed like consumer goods. The actual true value of an IPO is in fact of little relevance, what matters is how much investors are prepared to pay for the shares of a company in question. The whole IPO process, thus, becomes a game of chess between issuers and investors, who in their pursuit of higher profits, try to exploit behavioural biases of each other. The behavioural anomalies are the key drivers of investment fads. Clustering of IPOs and the pricing of new offers during the cluster is the point of contact between the investors and issuers that can provide an insight into behaviours of market participants and explain existing anomalies.
The learning by observing the past decisions of others (Observational Learning) can explain behavioural convergence, herding and informational cascades in financial markets. Moreover, this learning process can often be manipulated to influence or produce the (desirable) outcome.
The model of Observational Learning represents a theoretical overview of informational cascades. It applies the dynamics of imitative behaviour and examines how likely cascades are to happen, how likely are incorrect cascades to occur, how fashions change, and how effective are public information releases. It has been applied to some extent in laboratory settings but hasn’t been tested empirically on a real-life data yet.
The focus of the research is to contribute to understanding of the behaviours of market participants and investigate the role of public information and public information releases with recommendations for policy development and implementation.
- 2012-2013 Fund Administrator at the Bank of New York Mellon, Wexford
- 2003 – 2007 Co-owner and Managing Director at Xenstone Ltd.
- 1999 – 2001 Teacher of English, Russian and French at the Centre of Foreign Languages, Yekaterinburg, Russia
Awards
- AIB Centre for Finance and Business research PhD scholarship award (expected completion date April, 2018.
- 2012 - Best Paper Award for her Masters Thesis titled ‘Initial and Aftermarket Performance of IPOs in Emerging Markets: Evidence from China, India, and Brazil’ by Waterford Institute of Technology
Journals:
Doherty, O. (2018) “Informational cascades in financial markets: review and synthesis”, Review of Behavioral Finance, Vol. 10, No. 1 (forthcoming)
Working Papers:
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C., and Forbes, W.(2018) ‘IPO underpricing and price manipulation in informational cascades’, Working Paper
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C., and Forbes, W. (2018) ‘Informational cascades and waves in IPO markets’, Working Paper.
Conference Papers:
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C. and Forbes, W. (2016) ‘Social Learning and Informational Cascades in Financial Markets: Review and Synthesis’, INFINITI Conference, Dublin [13-14 June].
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C. and Forbes, W. (2016) ‘Social Learning and Informational Cascades in Financial Markets’, IAFA Conference, Waterford [18-20 May].
Presentations
Seminars:
Seminar ‘Social Learning and Informational Cascades in Financial Markets’, University of Oldenburg, Germany [21 June, 2016]
Seminar ‘Irish Banking Landscape: Past and Present’, University of Oldenburg, Germany [22 June, 2016]
Conferences:
- June, 2016 - INFINITI Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
- May, 2016 - IAFA Conference, Waterford IT, Ireland
- May, 2016 - WIT Research Day, Waterford, Ireland
- March, 2016 - Academy of Behavioural Finance Conference, Ca’Foscari University, Italy
- April, 2015 - WIT Research Day, Waterford, Ireland
- June, 2014 - Creating Connections, Waterford, Ireland
- May, 2014 - Economy and Society Graduate Summer School, Co. Cork
- May, 2014 - Young Finance Scholars’ Conference, University of Sussex, UK
- Sept., 2013 - IAM Conference, Waterford IT, Ireland
Journals:
Doherty, O. (2018) “Informational cascades in financial markets: review and synthesis”, Review of Behavioral Finance, Vol. 10, No. 1 (forthcoming)
Working Papers:
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C., and Forbes, W.(2018) ‘IPO underpricing and price manipulation in informational cascades’, Working Paper
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C., and Forbes, W. (2018) ‘Informational cascades and waves in IPO markets’, Working Paper.
Conference Papers:
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C. and Forbes, W. (2016) ‘Social Learning and Informational Cascades in Financial Markets: Review and Synthesis’, INFINITI Conference, Dublin [13-14 June].
Doherty, O., O’ Keeffe, C. and Forbes, W. (2016) ‘Social Learning and Informational Cascades in Financial Markets’, IAFA Conference, Waterford [18-20 May].
Presentations
Seminars:
Seminar ‘Social Learning and Informational Cascades in Financial Markets’, University of Oldenburg, Germany [21 June, 2016]
Seminar ‘Irish Banking Landscape: Past and Present’, University of Oldenburg, Germany [22 June, 2016]
Conferences:
- June, 2016 - INFINITI Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
- May, 2016 - IAFA Conference, Waterford IT, Ireland
- May, 2016 - WIT Research Day, Waterford, Ireland
- March, 2016 - Academy of Behavioural Finance Conference, Ca’Foscari University, Italy
- April, 2015 - WIT Research Day, Waterford, Ireland
- June, 2014 - Creating Connections, Waterford, Ireland
- May, 2014 - Economy and Society Graduate Summer School, Co. Cork
- May, 2014 - Young Finance Scholars’ Conference, University of Sussex, UK
- Sept., 2013 - IAM Conference, Waterford IT, Ireland