Tavneet Suri

Tavneet Suri is the Louis E. Seley Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She holds multiple prestigious positions including being an NBER Faculty Research Fellow, a Junior Affiliate at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a Research Affiliate at J-PAL, a Research Affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and the Co-Director of the Agriculture Research Programme at the International Growth Center (IGC). Suri serves on the Executive Committee of the J-PAL Board of Directors and is Co-Chair of J-PAL's Agriculture sector, Co-Chair of the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative, and Co-Chair of J-PAL Africa's Digital Identification and Finance Initiative. She is also the Scientific Advisor for the UM6P-J-PAL Agricultural Lab for Africa (UJALA).

Dr. Suri earned her BA in economics from Cambridge University, UK, followed by an MA in International and Development Economics (IDE) and a PhD in economics, both from Yale University.

Her research centers on applied microeconomic issues in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular focus on technology adoption (agricultural, water, cell phone), risk sharing and consumption smoothing, the role of measurement error in poverty dynamics, and the role of infrastructure in the development of markets. She has conducted extensive research on mobile money (particularly M-PESA), digital financial services, universal basic income, and agricultural technology adoption across Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. Her work often examines how digital technologies can transform economic opportunities and reduce poverty in developing economies.

Her research has been funded by numerous prestigious organizations including the Gates Foundation, Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries, Digital Credit Observatory at UC Berkeley, Financial Sector Deepening Kenya, Sloan School of Management, J-PAL Governance Initiative, International Growth Center, Microsaving & Payments Innovation Initiative, Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative, CGIAR, Weiss Fund, The World Bank, TechnoServe Coffee Initiative, and Google Consortium on Financial Services and Poverty.

Dr. Suri is an editor at the Review of Economics and Statistics and has been involved in numerous high-impact research projects including a large-scale universal basic income experiment in Kenya, studies on mobile money's impact on poverty reduction, and research on digital financial services across multiple African countries. Her work has been featured in major media outlets including the New York Times, NPR, and Vox.

She has led several ongoing research projects including "A Universal Basic Income in Kenya" (with Abhijit Banerjee, Alan Krueger, Michael Faye and Paul Niehaus), "Effects of the Internet in Kenya" (with Kamal Bhattacharya), "Mobile Money and Women's Economic Empowerment," "Improving Management of Small Firms in Kenya" (with John Van Reenen), and "Reducing Default and Improving Resilience on Digital Credit" (with Suleiman Asman).