Craig McIntosh
Assistant Professor of Economics
ctmcintosh@ucsd.edu
Phone: (858) 822-1125
Fax: (858) 534-3939
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0519
Office #1305
Education
Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 2003 (agricultural and resource economics)
M.A., UC Berkeley, 1999 (agricultural and resource economics)
B.A., UC Santa Cruz, 1993 (economics)
Biography
CV
McIntosh is a development economist whose work focuses on program evaluation. His main research interest is the design of institutions which promote the provision of financial services to micro-entrepreneurs. He has conducted field evaluations of innovations in microfinance in Central America and East Africa, and is currently working on projects analyzing the impact of credit bureaus in Guatemala and the introduction of mobile telephony in rural Rwanda.
Programs and Centers
International Development and Nonprofit Management Career Track
International Economics Career Track
Perspectives
McIntosh can comment on issues related to credit, insurance, and savings markets in developing countries, as well as on how to evaluate policy impacts. This includes how to design and conduct randomized field trials, how to design quasi-experimental impact assessments, and how institutional data or retrospective surveys may be used to conduct an ex-post assessment.
Expertise
McIntosh is a development economist who specializes in evaluating the impact of interventions in financial markets in developing countries.
Current Projects
McIntosh is currently working on a variety of evaluation projects. In Guatemala, along with a team from UC Berkeley, USF, and Universidad Rafael Landivar he is analyzing the impact of information-sharing between lenders on credit market outcomes and economic mobility. Other randomized work includes the impact of the introduction of cell phones into agricultural communities in Rwanda (with the Grameen Technology Center), and a community-driven development project in Tanzania (with researchers from the World Bank). Non-experimental evaluation work has looked at the impact of bundling health insurance into microfinance in Uganda, and the impact of the U.S. Endangered Species act on the probability of species recovery.
Background Notes
McIntosh joined IR/PS in 2003. He has done aid work in Somalia with the International Rescue Committee, and spent a year on a Fulbright grant as Research Director at FINCA/Uganda, a major microfinance lender.
Recent Publications
“Competition and Microfinance” with Bruce Wydick, Journal of Development Economics 78, December 2005, pp. 271-298.
“How Rising Competition among Microfinance Institutions Affects Incumbent Lenders”, with Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet , The Economic Journal 115, October 2005, pp. 987-1004.
“Credit Information Systems in Less-Developed Countries: A Test with Microfinance in Guatemala”, with Jill Luoto and Bruce Wydick, forthcoming (January 2007), Economic Development and Cultural Change.
“The Effectiveness of Listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act: An Econometric Analysis Using Matching Methods”, with Paul Ferraro and Monica Ospina. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Vol. 54, 2007.
“Estimating Treatment Effects from Spatial Policy Experiments: An Application to Ugandan Microfinance”. Review of Economics and Statistics, 7(06), February 2008.
"The Great Mexican Emigration", with Gordon Hanson (NBER Working Paper 13675). Forthcoming, Review of Economics and Statistics.
"Using the Error in Pre-Election Polls to Test for the Presence of Pork", with Jacob Allen. Forthcoming, The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy.
"Microfinance and Home Improvement: Using Retrospective Panel Data to Measure Program Effects on Fundamental Events", with Gonzalo Villaran and Bruce Wydick. Forthcoming, World Development.
Recent Working Papers
"The Supply and Demand Side Impacts of Credit Market Information", with Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet.
"Has Better Health Care Contributed to Higher HIV Prevalence in Sub-Saharan Africa?"
"Adverse Selection, Moral Hazard, and Credit Information Systems", with Bruce Wydick.
"Identifying Non-Linearities in Fixed Effects Models", with Wolfram Schlenker.
“The Empirics of Affirmative Action”.
“The Use of Two Control Groups in Quasi-Experimental Program Evaluation”.
IRGN 446 Applied Data Analysis & Statistical Decision Making
Spring 2009
Course Description:
The goal of the course is to teach how to evaluate quantitative information in business and economics contexts, and to make sound managerial decisions in complex situations. Much of the problems and the course work will involve statistical software and spreadsheet analysis of data. The course covers various applied multivariate statistical methods beyond basics.
IRGN 451 Economic Development
Spring 2009
Course Description:
This course examines comparative patterns of industrialization and agricultural modernization with a focus on certain common features of the modernization process and widely varying endowments, policies, and experiences, of different countries.
IRGN 490 Designing Field Experiments
Spring 2009
IRGN 417 Microfinance
Spring 2008
