Professor McIntosh’s work focuses on program evaluation. His main research interest is the design of institutions that promote the provision of financial services to micro-entrepreneurs, and he has conducted field evaluations of innovative anti-poverty policies in Mexico, Guatemala, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania.

He is currently working on research projects testing how technology can be used to extend financial services and deepen agricultural markets, as well as a set of studies seeking to understand how the impact of cash transfers relates to more conventional types of development assistance.

As co-director of the Policy Design and Evaluation Lab, McIntosh is an expert on issues related to credit, insurance and savings markets in developing countries, as well as on how to design and conduct randomized controlled trials and the field measurement techniques required to capture outcomes.

Before earning his Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from UC Berkeley, McIntosh did aid work in Somalia with the International Rescue Committee and spent a year on a Fullbright grant as a research director at FINCA/Uganda, a major microfinance lender.