Olesia has a PhD in economics from the University of Virginia (USA). She also holds a master’s degree in banking and finance from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics from the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”/Economics Educations and Research Consortium (Ukraine).
After completing her PhD studies, Olesia worked as an Assistant Professor and later a Department Head at Kyiv School of Economics in her home country Ukraine. She taught master-level courses in financial economics, monetary economics, macroeconomics and other subjects. She was also involved in many policy and consulting projects for USAID, World Bank, SIDA, Simcorp Ukraine, Ukrainian Agricultural Exchange, Ukrainian Energy Exchange etc.
Financial markets and instruments
Olesia’s fields of research are financial market and instruments, as well as money and banking. In her PhD project, she focused on empirical tests of option pricing models with uncertain and stochastic volatility. Her recent research projects include predicting bank defaults and banking crises, nowcasting inflation, arbitrage in gas forward and spot markets and IPO market timing.
She is actively involved in a project aiming at launching an agricultural exchange in Ukraine. Though Ukraine is one of the biggest world producers and exporters of grains and many other agricultural commodities, local farmers, processors and traders still have very limited access to organised trading in these assets even in spot markets. There are many legislative, institutional, logistical and financial literacy challenges that need to be tackled for this initiative to succeed.
The project is even more crucial now that the Ukrainian economy is crippled by the war, with many production facilities being destroyed, supply chains being broken, and surviving farmers and processors needing new instruments for transparent and fair market transactions.
Private life
Olesia is a mother of two sons, and she loves spending time with them. She is also a fan of romance books, badminton and cross stitching.
Further information
Olesia Verchenko
Phone: +45 9940 2746
Email: ov@business.aau.dk