I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced. I co-direct the PEARS Lab at UC Merced. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science in 2020 from MIT. I am also a research affiliate at CAPE, MIT Governance Lab and the Stanford Governance Project.
I study topics in comparative political behavior and political economy. My book project, titled “Between Citizens and the State: How Bureaucratic Transaction Costs Sustain Clientelism,” explores how bureaucratic transaction costs prevent individuals from directly claiming welfare benefits. Instead, these costs create a market for clientelist intermediaries, disincentivizing governments from creating sound social policy and preventing citizens from engaging with the state effectively. The policy instrument I developed through my research was awarded the 2017 Innovations in Transparency award by the Mexican Government’s Transparency Institute.
I studied Political Science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and have been a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a post-doctoral fellow at CDDRL at Stanford University.
I am a proud native of Monterrey, Mexico and an adopted child of Mexico City. As most Mexicans, I have two family names: the first is Rizzo and the second is Reyes. I mostly go with Rizzo for simplicity, but both ‘Rizzo’ or ‘Rizzo Reyes’ are appropriate.
Feel free to contact me at trizzo[at]ucmerced[dot]edu