Mario Villarreal-Diaz, M.A. 2002 – International Political Economy; Ph.D. 2005 - Political Science and Economics

Mario Villarreal-Diaz, a former Fulbright doctoral fellow, will receive his Ph D. from the School of Politics and Economics today.

After earning his bachelor of arts degree in finance from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico, Villarreal joined a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Company in 1994 where he monitored sales and managed the marketing budget.

After going on to earn his master of science in industrial economics at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Villarreal began teaching at ITESM, and later joined the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont as a research associate.
 
Villarreal received a master of arts in international political economy from CGU in 2002 and has served as a teaching assistant and president of the Graduate Student Council. In 2003, he was the recipient of the Dream and Believe Award, the most prestigious and generous scholarship awarded at CGU. Currently, he is a National Research Initiative doctoral fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, DC.

Villarreal’s professional and research interests are rooted in the policy-making process and how political institutions and processes evolve and affect economic incentives. He is particularly interested in the reform of social programs and the deregulation of the private sector, and wrote his dissertation on the political economy of pension systems reform. His future plans include not only academic research, but work on the design, implementation, evaluation, and enforcement of public policies related to these topics.