Lakshmi Iyer is an economist in the Business, Government and the International Economy (BGIE) Unit 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 historical and current property rights institutions in developing countries such as India, Vietnam, China and the Philippines. She has also studied 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, the determinants of conflict and the consequences of female political representation.

Lakshmi Iyer teaches Institutions, Macroeconomics and the Global Economy (IMaGE) in the second year MBA curriculum, and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.