Kenya under the microscope
Occasionally, parents really do know best: When Tavneet Suri first started taking economics as a middle-school student in Nairobi, Kenya, she disliked it. But her father would not let her drop the course. “I don’t care if you get a C,” she recalls him saying. “It’s good for you to try new things.” How right he was: Suri took the course, did well, and by high school, “Economics was my favorite subject.” Today, she is an accomplished development economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management whose intensive, on-the-ground studies have produced significant findings about Kenya’s economy and politics. Suri, who was granted tenure earlier this year, conducts three main strands of research. The best-known concerns the use of M-PESA, a text-based “mobile money” system that lets Kenyans borrow and share risk with others more easily, smoothing out income fluctuations in a heavily agricultural society. Tavneet Suri Photo: Bryce Vickmark ...