American Institutes for Research

Thomas de Hoop is a principal economist at AIR in Washington D.C. He has 13 years of experience designing, implementing, and leading mixed-methods impact evaluations and systematic reviews in low-and middle-income countries. Currently, he oversees a research and evaluation portfolio with a focus on the impact, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of women’s groups. He is the co-principal investigator of the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups, a four-year research project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that focuses on synthesizing, strengthening, and disseminating research on the impact, cost-effectiveness, and implementation models of women’s groups operating at scale in India, Nigeria, and Uganda. For this project he leads or co-leads experimental and quasi-experimental studies on the synergistic effects of self-help groups and social protection programs in India, evidence syntheses on the impact, and implementation models of women’s groups in Uganda and Nigeria, a systematic review on the impact of economic self-help group programs on asset ownership, cost-effectiveness analyses of women’s groups in India and Uganda, and studies on the functioning of women’s groups after COVID-19. In addition, he guides the Gender Equality team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the use of evidence to inform the Foundation’s gender equality strategy and led the development of a guide for measuring women’s empowerment and economic outcomes in impact evaluations of women’s groups.

Dr. de Hoop is also the principal or co-principal investigator for a cluster-randomized controlled trial to determine the impact of a technology-aided instruction program on learning outcomes among students in community schools in Zambia, a quasi-experimental study on the impact of an affordable housing program in India, an assessment of the social and economic outcomes of organic cotton farmers in India, and an evidence synthesis on the impact and cost-effectiveness of education programs for forcibly displaced populations.

Previously, Dr. de Hoop was the principal investigator on a three-year research project supported by UNICEF, UNHCR, and DFID that aimed to generate rigorous evidence on how to facilitate the effective scaling of innovations in education in protracted crisis settings. For this project, he led a meta-evaluation that synthesized the lessons learned from five process evaluations and three impact evaluations of education innovations. For this meta-evaluation, he led four mixed-methods studies that examined the impact and scaling models of a remedial education program in Kenya and multifaceted education programs in Jordan and Rwanda. He also led a cluster-randomized controlled trial of an early childhood development program in Bangladesh, a quasi-experimental evaluation of an economic self-help group program in India, and a strategy for future impact evaluation work in UNICEF’s education office. In addition, he co-authored Campbell systematic reviews on the effects of economic self-help group programs on women’s empowerment, the effects of vocational and business training programs on women’s labor market outcomes, and the impact of education programs on early grade literacy in Latin-America and the Caribbean.