Tavneet Suri
Tavneet Suri is Editor-in-Chief of VoxDev.org.
Tavneet Suri is the Maurice F. Strong Career Development Professor and an Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Suri is a development economist, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her research centers on agriculture, household financial access and informal risk sharing, and, more recently, governance and political participation. A large body of her work focuses on the constraints to technology adoption in agriculture. She has also conducted a lot of research on the impacts of mobile money (for example, M-PESA in Kenya) and applications of the mobile money platform for credit contracts (e.g. trade credit and credit for solar panels). Her most recent work has focused on governance issues in the Kibera slum in Nairobi and a large scale field experiment she conducted in Kenya during the 2013 general election (the project where “they sent a million text messages, literally!”). She spends a lot of time in the field, collecting her own data, primarily in Kenya, Sierra Leone and Rwanda. She is the Scientific Director for Africa for J-PAL; a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research; an affiliate of BREAD and CEPR; and co-director of the Agriculture Research Program at the International Growth Center. Suri holds a BA in economics from Trinity College, Cambridge University, as well as an MA in international and development economics, an MPhil in economics, and a PhD from Yale University.
Content by Tavneet Suri
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Publication - Policy Brief
Tracking constraints to micro-entrepreneurship using IVR technology: Results from a pilot study in Kenya and Uganda
Current data collection exercises fail to capture the heterogeneity of entrepreneurs in developing countries in terms of scale. This project proposes a research agenda around understanding the constraints faced by micro-entrepreneurs, both formal and informal, through a series of mobile-based surveys (using IVR technology) delivered to small firms and...
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Project
The role of mobile-based trade credit on business development
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of most economies. They are flexible in responding to new opportunities and possess potential for rapid growth. As a result, SMEs are believed to serve as engines for innovation, employment, and social mobility. In developing countries, SMEs represent a particularly large part of the economy. However, data...
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Blog post
Tracking constraints to micro-enterprise growth in Kenya and Uganda
Existing surveys that aim to measure and track barriers to business growth often under-represent micro-enterprises and small informal firms. Our pilot, which targeted a sample of small scale entrepreneurs in Kenya and Uganda in a survey conducted by phone, suggests that such enterprises may face a very different set of constraints to growth. This exposes a potential...
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Publication - Project Report
Constraints to entrepreneurship: Findings from pilot studies in Kenya and Uganda
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Publication - Project Report
The economic impacts of Ebola on firms in Sierra Leone
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Blog post
Welcome to VoxDev
Today, the IGC launched VoxDev.org in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and and the Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries (PEDL) programme.
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Project
Tracking constraints to entrepreneurship in Africa
An important part of understanding the growth prospects of an economy comes from understanding the constraints to business growth and entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the data in this area is scarce in East Africa. The World Bank collects two sets of data in this vein, both of which suffer from some well-known issues such as the focus being solely on formal firms, medium to...
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Blog post
Dilemma of capping bank interest rates in Kenya
Post signing of the Banking (Amendment) Bill 2015, Kenyans were full of hope and expectations of lower interest on their loans and higher earnings on deposits. Like with so many regulatory actions, the outcome for the people will depend on the implementation of the law. In this case, the fate of the law will rely heavily on financial institutions, and implementation...
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Publication - Bulletin
The economic impacts of Ebola – Bulletin seven (February 2016)
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Publication - Bulletin
The economic impacts of Ebola - Bulletin four (June 2015)
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Blog post
How bad data fed the Ebola epidemic
Misleading reports, speculation and poor projections from international agencies, government ministries and the media about the Ebola outbreak have exacerbated the problem
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Project
The economic impacts of Ebola on firms in Sierra Leone
Katherine Casey (Stanford), Rachel Glennerster (J-PAL), and Tavneet Suri (MIT) have initiated a research project studying the firm-level impact of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. Our objective is twofold: first, to bring reliable quantitative data to the policy discussion as the outbreak unfolds in real time; and second, to establish baseline information on the private...
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Publication - Bulletin
The economic impacts of ebola - Bulletin two (January 2015)
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Publication - Bulletin
The economic impacts of Ebola - Bulletin one (November 2014)
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Project
The economic implications of Ebola on markets, traders and food security
Rachel Glennerster and Tavneet Suri have analysed the impact of the Ebola crisis on the functioning of agricultural markets in Sierra Leone. Several rounds of phone call-based market surveys have aimed to understand how commodity prices are shifting across different regions and how trading has been affected. The researchers partnered with Innovations for Poverty Action to...
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Publication - Project Report
The Economic Impact of Ebola (October 2014 Report)
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Publication - Project Report
Powering Small Business: Understanding the Impact of Solar Energy Under Different Pricing Schemes (Final Report)
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Project
Powering small business: Understanding the impact of solar energy under different pricing schemes
587 million people, roughly 69.5% of the population, lack access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Retailers with poor access to electricity have limited means to keep their shops open at night. This limits their ability to operate during evening hours and reach customers who might be at work during the day. Solutions like kerosene do a poor job of lighting the room and...
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Project
The Growth Impacts of Diamond Mining in Sierra Leone
As other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Sierra Leone is currently experiencing a “mining boom” that is will likely impact the country’s growth prospects in the near future, as major investments are made into the exploitation of recently found mineral fields (bauxite, iron ore). Unlike most countries on the continent, however, Sierra Leone has a long history of...
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Project
Agriculture, Technology Adoption, and Infrastructure: What Are the Returns and Who Do They Accrue To? Evidence from Sierra Leone
In spite of the central relevance of infrastructure in the development policy debate, there has been little rigorous research on the impact of large scale infrastructure investments in very poor economies. It is usually difficult to disentangle the causal impact of infrastructure on economic outcomes as infrastructure is often built in the fastest growing areas of a...
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Project
Promoting the adoption of new rice varieties: Addressing the costs of early adoption
Over the past decades, agricultural productivity has stagnated in much of sub-Saharan Africa while many other regions have seen dramatic productivity improvements. As a result, many African countries do not produce enough staple food to meet their growing consumption needs. Sierra Leone, a net exporter of rice in the 1960s, must now import a third of its total consumption...
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Project
Diffusion of Technologies within Social Networks: Evidence from a Coffee Training Program in Rwanda
Coffee is one of Rwanda’s major exports but coffee production is dominated by small producers. Finding ways to improve yields could help small‐scale farmers shift out of subsistence farming into more profitable activities. Assuming that knowledge deficits are the main hindrance to the adoption of productivity‐enhancing agronomic practices, training on agricultural...
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Publication - Project Report
The Economic Impact of Ebola (September 2014 Report)
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Publication - Evidence Paper
IGC Evidence Paper - Firms
The IGC Firm Capabilities Research Programme pulls economists with a common interest in firm capabilities together to focus on three core questions: (i) what are the key proximate determinants of firm productivity? (ii) Where does the productive capacity of firms originate? (iii) What are the barriers that prevent resources from moving from unproductive firms and...
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Publication - Working Paper
Powering Small Business: Understanding the Impact of Solar Energy under Different Pricing Schemes
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Publication - Working Paper
Rural Roads and Intermediated Trade (Working Paper)
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Publication - Policy Brief
Rural Feeder Roads and Access to Markets (Policy Brief)
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Publication - Policy Brief
Diffusion of Technologies Within Social Networks (Policy Brief)
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Publication - Policy Brief
Promoting the Adoption of New Rice Varieties: Addressing the Costs of Early Adoption (Policy Brief)
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Publication - Working Paper
Diffusion of Technologies Within Social Networks (Project Report)