• Holman, Mirya, Lakshmi Iyer and Christina Wolbrecht. “Tapping into Power: Explaining Women’s Access to Local Political Power.” August 2025.

• Iyer, Lakshmi, Susan Ostermann and Coleson Weir. “Political Incumbents and India’s Electoral Redistricting: Evidence from Two States.” August 2025. [Revised version of Iyer and Reddy (2013)].
  • Media: The Hindu.

• Holman, Mirya, Lakshmi Iyer and Christina Wolbrecht. “Turning Votes into Power: New Women Voters and Access to Local Governance.” May 2025.

• Lancker, Kira, Lakshmi Iyer, Faraz Usmani, James Allen IV, Molly J. Doruska, Samba Mbaye, Aminata Sylla, Bineta Sow, Jason R. Rohr and Christopher B. Barrett. “Do private incentives crowd out public good donations? Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment.” April 2025.

• Iyer, Lakshmi, Paloma Lopez de mesa Moyano, and Vivek Moorthy. “Religion and Demography: Papal Influences on Fertility.” February 2025.
  • Media: Notre Dame News; Crux; The News Memo; Today’s Catholic.

• Bhalotra, Sonia, Irma Clots-Figueras, and Lakshmi Iyer. “Ethnic Conflict: The Role of Ethnic Representation.” WIDER Working Paper 2023/84, June 2023.

• “Gender Quotas and Crimes Against Women: Is There an Intensive Margin Effect?” with Margaret Triyana (email me for a draft).

Resting Papers

• “Poverty and Crime: Evidence from Rainfall and Trade Shocks in India.” (with Petia Topalova), updated August 2014. PDF
  • Media: Slate, Chris Blattman’s blog.