(Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

I am an economist at the University of Notre Dame. My primary fields of research are political economy and development economics. My CV is here.

Positions

• University of Notre Dame
  • Professor of Economics and Global Affairs
  • Academic Director, Building Inclusive Growth (BIG) Lab
  • Principal Investigator, Representation of Women (ROW) Lab
  • Principal Investigator, Innovating Green Pathways to Prosperity
  • Faculty affiliate:  Kellogg Institute for International Studies; Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies; Gender Studies Program; Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate; Pulte Institute for Global Development
• Institute of Labor Economics (IZA): Research Fellow
• Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD): Affiliate
• Ideas for India: Editorial Board Member

NEW!!

• New working paper: Iyer, Lakshmi, Paloma Lopez de mesa Moyano, and Vivek Moorthy. “Religion and Demography: Papal Influences on Fertility.” October 2024.
• Video: “Did colonialism really cause poverty?” Discover Economics and the CAGE Research Centre series on “Why isn’t the whole world developed?”, September 2024.
• Journal article: Fertig, Alexander, Alexandra Hartman, Lakshmi Iyer, and Edmund Malesky. “A Field of Her Own: Property Rights and Women’s Agency in Myanmar.” Conditionally accepted, Journal of Politics. 
• New working paper: Iyer, Lakshmi, and Coleson Weir. “The Colonial Legacy in India: How Persistent are the Effects of Historical Institutions?” June 2024.
• Updated working paper: Chaudhary, Latika, and Lakshmi Iyer. “The Importance of Being Local? Administrative Decentralization and Human Development.”  June 2024.
• Journal article: Cassan, Guilhem, Lakshmi Iyer, and Rinchan Ali Mirza. “Enfranchisement, Political Participation and Political Competition: Evidence from Colonial and Independent India.”  Journal of Economic History, forthcoming. 
• Book chapter: Bhalotra, Sonia, and Lakshmi Iyer. “Women and the Economy.” In The Cambridge Economic History of Modern South Asia, edited by Latika Chaudhary, Tirthankar Roy, and Anand Swamy. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
• Book chapter: “Gender and Natural Experiments in Developing Countries,” with Irma Clots-Figueras, forthcoming in Handbook of Experimental Development Economics, edited by Utteeyo Dasgupta and Pushkar Maitra.