Dr. Swapnil Motghare is a Researcher at the California Policy Lab at UCLA where he is part of a team focused on labor and employment. Before joining CPL, Dr. Motghare worked as Assistant Research Professor and Postdoctoral Research Associate in Economics at the University of Notre Dame.

Dr. Motghare’s published research and working papers focus on understanding the impact on workers of policies affecting wages as well as disruptions such as the COVID-19 induced recession. He has studied how workers adjust their work hours in response to increases in wages. More recently, he studied the effect of Unemployment Insurance generosity on labor supply. Dr. Motghare has also studied disparities in unemployment duration during the COVID-19 pandemic by gender, race, and ethnicity to understand the unequal effects of the pandemic.

Dr. Motghare was the lead Principal Investigator for impact evaluations of travel subsidy programs (free bus passes and rideshare rides offered to low-income residents) that were funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and implemented in South Bend, IN to help support employment for local residents. He was also instrumental in creating a dashboard of local economic indicators for the Mayor’s office of South Bend, IN.

Dr. Motghare earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Arizona, an MA in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin, a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management Shillong, and a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from Mumbai University, India.

Outside of work, Dr. Motghare loves spending time with his year-old daughter.