Acyclic complexes of injectives and finitistic dimensions

For a ring $A$, we consider the question whether every bounded above cochain complex of injective $A$-modules which is acyclic is null-homotopic. We show that if $A$ is left and right noetherian and has a dualizing complex, then this implies that the finitistic dimension of $A$ is finite. In the appendix, Nakamura and Thompson show that the opposite holds over any ring. Our results give several new necessary and sufficient conditions for a ring to have finite finitistic dimension in a very general setting. Applications include a generalization of a recent result of Rickard about relations between unbounded derived categories and finitistic dimension, as well as several new characterizations of noetherian rings which satisfy the Gorenstein symmetry conjecture.