Spotlight - Craig McIntosh
(2008) Q&A with Craig McIntosh, Associate Professor of Economics
A passion for Africa, Statistics, and IR/PS students.
Tell us about your educational background before coming to San Diego.
I have an undergraduate degree from UC Santa Cruz where I started in anthropology, switched to political science, and ended up in economics. I did my Ph.D. in agricultural economics at UC Berkeley, so I am a lifetime member of the UC system. Between college and grad school I took some time off and I worked in Somalia and Kenya. I had a fair amount of field experience by the time I started my Ph.D. and had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do
What are some of your research interests, and what are you currently working on?
I’m a development economist so I’m interested in policy questions that can be used to increase economic mobility and give people the ability to help themselves out of poverty. My research agenda has two sides to it: the first is institutions that can increase economic mobility, and I have focused particularly on credit market questions, specifically the role of information in lending. Currently, I have a project in Malawi that looks at conditional cash transfer programs and examines if programs that have been demonstrated to be successful in keeping girls in school may also have some effect on their sexual behavior, which in turn could be a way of combating the HIV epidemic and creating a win-win situation there in terms of poverty and health.
The second side of my research agenda is based on the question of evaluating programs themselves; a tough question in development and an important one due to the amount of development work done on the public dime. This raises the question of where the public should be spending their money and what is the most cost-effective way to achieve a given end. I am very interested in the statistics of how you calculate those impacts and in the applied process of doing evaluations in the field, doing randomized evaluations, quasi experiments, playing games, etc. I think it’s a fascinating and very rapidly expanding area with a lot of intellectual creativity.
What are you looking forward to the most for your research in Malawi?
These field projects take a lot of advanced planning. You need to raise the money, to carry out the field work, to do the intervention, to run the surveys, and get the data back, so my main interest, really, is on what the answer is going to be. We have a nicely set up study, really good surveys, and I’m fascinated every time I open the data. It is an environment where the results are very credible and you don’t know what they are until you open the data and let it tell the story. I’m interested to see if it really works because we designed the whole thing with a very specific goal in mind. We have the first-year data back and we see relatively large effects on outcomes, such as girls getting pregnant and getting married. We will begin Voluntary Counseling and Testing for HIV and STDs in a month or so, and once we get that data back we’ll start to have some answers on the HIV question.
What classes are you teaching at IR/PS?
I teach three classes at IR/PS: first is QM3 which is the applied data analysis class. Second, economic development, which is a mixture of the theory underlying decisionmaking in a developing-country context, a look at the institutions that carry out the work, the type of data that exists and some of the quantitative tools to be able to work with that data. Finally, I teach a course on microfinance.
What do you like about teaching?
I really love teaching at IR/PS and think this is a very interesting level to teach in the sense that most students come in with some international experience and passion for the questions and the work that we deal with. I find the students to be very broad and motivated in their thinking and very good at carrying out applied projects. They are unafraid of tackling the real world and getting their hands dirty while working on class assignments. I teach in the Ph.D. sequence of the economics department, but at the end of the day I really do enjoy teaching the masters students because they are a very passionate and dedicated group of people who go straight out to use the tools that they learn. It feels very practical and very hands-on, and keeps you focused on teaching things that are directly applicable. The ultimate discipline is talking to the people who just graduated and finding out what jobs they are getting and what tools they are using in those jobs.
Why did you decide to become a professor?
I stumbled into it. I never would have expected that I was going to be an academic. I always intended to work in the field. It's really the work itself that I'm passionate about. When I went to graduate school I fell in love with the statistics and I found myself intrigued by the power and the applicability of the tools. I feel that as an academic you exist in a unique policy space because you are able to engage in projects that have multiple parties with very different strategic interests, and you can preserve this single minded integrity on getting the right answer because that is what you are paid to do as an academic researcher. You operate in a space where there is no such thing as an answer devoid of policy meaning and almost every party to any of these big research projects has an interest in getting a certain answer. I find it a privilege to be able to operate in that space where you get to be neutral and try to set the problem up to see what the answer is in that circumstance. I love doing the field work and research. I find that being a professor is an ideal springboard to be able to be heavily engaged in the real world while having a foot placed on territory that is sufficiently neutral that you don't get wrapped up in the strategic battles over what people want the answer to be, remaining focused on what the answer really is.
Is there life outside of IR/PS for Craig McIntosh?
I have two little kids and spend as much time as I can with them. Most of life outside of IR/PS is family.
Do you have any advice for IR/PS students?
First of all, if you find yourself in tough economic times the most important thing to remember is that there are things outside of your control and to retain your confidence and optimism even in circumstances where you're facing challenges in getting what you want. Moving towards the right occupation for you is a perpetual journey and life is always an apprenticeship, so I would also say to avoid the idea that there is a good job out there waiting for you, and that once you get into it you have succeeded. The idea here is that you're always trying to fortify your skills, improve your connections, always trying to learn on the job, and that's the way the economy works now. It's an accurate description of the situation we all find ourselves in. Being clear about that from the outset can help to dispel this myth that the first job you get is somehow destiny for the rest of your life. It's a perpetual process, so remaining confident and focused on the things that you're passionate about and the things that you're good at gives you an internal compass that can help guide you through times where the external world is not cooperating.
For more information about Professor McIntosh's work and areas of expertise, please visit his faculty page.
