Swapnika Rachapalli

Swapnika Rachapalli is an Assistant Professor in the Strategy & Business Economics Division at UBC Sauder School of Business. She holds a BSc-MSc (Integrated) in Economics from IIT Kanpur and a PhD in Economics from the University of Toronto.

Her research examines critical intersections of international trade, innovation, and economic development, with particular focus on:

• Technology diffusion through global value chains
• Labor market impacts of trade policies
• Structural barriers to economic participation
• Markup dynamics in multi-product firms

Her publications demonstrate consistent focus on global economic systems, with recent work analyzing vertical spillovers in production networks (2024) and empirical measurement of embodied technology diffusion (2023). Earlier research addressed gender-based labor participation constraints in developing economies (2018) and game-theoretic market models (2013).

She received the 2021 World Trade Organization Young Economist Essay Award for her work on buyer-seller learning in global value chains. No information was provided regarding supervised students, research grants, or laboratory affiliations.