Ph.D. Program

Overview

The finance Ph.D. program seeks to train world class academic researchers. The program offers an in-depth learning environment, close student-faculty interaction, exposure to different areas in the field of finance, and access to state-of-the-art computer software and financial data. Recent graduates have leveraged the breadth of our faculty’s research interests to study questions relating to corporate finance, the pricing of debt, equity, and derivatives, municipal financing, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized finance. Professor Matt Gustafson has been director of the Ph.D. Program since 2022.

Spotlights

Alumni: Kevin Pisciotta

Kevin Pisciotta came to Penn State after completing his undergraduate and master's degrees in finance at the University of Delaware and graduated our doctoral program in 2018. Kevin placed at the University of Kansas School of Business as an Assistant Professor of Finance, where he recently was promoted to Associate Professor of Finance with tenure in spring 2025. Kevin conducts empirical research in the areas of initial public offerings, sell-side analyst research, innovation, and the economic effects of vice. His most recent publication examines the spillover effects of local opioid abuse on corporate innovation, and his most recent working paper examines the effects of online sports betting on household financial health. In the working paper, his coauthors and he find that a significant fraction of sports bettors increase their financial exposure to sports betting over time, they substitute long-term savings with sports betting transfers, and they appear to draw on credit card lines to expand current consumption on both sports betting and related entertainment spending. This paper won the best paper award at the 2024 Finance Research Association Conference and has been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, Yahoo Finance, and several additional outlets.

Current Student: Jewon Shin

Jewon Shin is entering his fourth year as a doctoral student with ambitions of securing a tenure-track faculty position at a research-focused university. His research primarily explores empirical corporate finance, focusing on disclosure, ESG, and corporate governance. Jewon’s work has been invited for presentation at several major conferences, including the Northern Finance Association, Eastern Finance Association, and Financial Management Association, and he has received multiple Best Paper Awards from the Asian FA, Southwestern Finance Association, and the Massey Sustainable Finance Conference. Jewon has already published in the Journal of Business Ethics, a journal listed among the Financial Times top 50 journals, during his PhD. Prior to joining Penn State, Jewon worked as a financial machine learning intern at a startup company in Korea and completed his M.Sc. in Finance and a double major in Business Administration (B.B.A.) and Applied Statistics (B.A.) at Yonsei University.

Incoming Students

Kara Sun has a BS in computation and applied math from Hong Kong Baptist, a Master of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics from Northwestern, and most recently a Master of Financial Engineering from UC Berkeley. Over the past few years, she has held several positions in the financial industry, including working as an Associate Director at UBS, focused on quantitative electronic trading.

Bruce Wei has a BS in Data Analytics from OSU and an MS in Computational Finance from CMU. He has been working at EY as a quantitative finance and economics staff member since 2023.

Recent Placements

Qiang Wang (2025, University of Calgary)
Essays on Household Finance
Doctoral Committee: Jess Cornaggia (Chair), Charles Cao, Matthew Gustafson, Giang Bguyen

Jennifer Liang (2025, Idaho State)
Essays on Municipal Finance and Corporate Governance
Doctoral Committee: Peter Iliev (Chair), Kimberly Cornaggia, Matthew Gustafson