Brief Profile:

Lakshmi Iyer is an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School. Her primary research fields are political economy and development economics, with a special emphasis on property rights and the distribution of political power within societies. Her research has examined many dimensions of the distribution of political power within emerging market countries, including the legacy of colonial rule, the division of authority between politicians and bureaucrats, and the determinants of conflict. She is currently working on several projects related to the determinants and consequences of women’s political representation. She has also studied historical and current property rights institutions in several emerging markets including India, Vietnam, China and the Philippines. Her work has been published in leading academic journals in economics. She has also authored numerous case studies on institutions, macroeconomics and economic policy. Lakshmi Iyer holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).