Why does iMovie convert a 1.8GB .MTS (AVCHD) file into a 2.2 GB .mov file by reducing resolution?
Video is practically never stored uncompressed because the data rates are insane if they were.  Each image in a video is 1920 by 1080 pixels and takes 3 bytes per pixel (one each for red, green and blue).  That's 6.2 megabytes per frame.  There are 24 frames in a second, that's roughly 150 megabytes per second for 24p video.  That's 9 gigabytes per minute.

To reduce this size, codec's (encoders/decoders) are used that can compress the data either losslessly(similar to a zip file, they uncompress to produce identical input to the raw, uncompressed data) but typically can take as little as 1/3 of the space, or lossy, where the video is altered to make it easier to compress without significantly distorting the video.  Most HD video is shot with a minimally lossy codec due to the size (H.264).  AVCHD also records using H.264.  

If you are outputting to uncompressed or lossless compression for the MOV, then the file size would increase significantly from the compressed AVCHD file, even if the number of pixels being stored has been reduced some.  If you change to a similar H.264 data rate for the mov file, then you should not see an increase in file size.