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Tanner Regan.

Tanner Regan

Associate

Expertise: urban economics, development economics

Email:
t.regan1@lse.ac.uk
tanner_regan@email.gwu.edu
Connect:
Twitter
Website
Links:
CEP Urban
LBS Department of Economics & Wheeler Institute for Business and Development

Biography

Dr Tanner Regan is an Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University, and an Associate in CEP's Urban Programme. He completed his PhD at the LSE in 2021 and worked as a Research Fellow in Economics at London Business School before joining GWU in 2022.

Current areas of research include:

  • Urban economics: long run effects of urban planning, demand for property rights, urban growth and property rights in low-income countries.
  • Public finance: property tax policy and property valuation in low-income countries.
  • Regional economics: social connectedness and innovation, and the social segregation of race in America.

Publications

Journal article
Unbundling tenure security and demand for property rights: Evidence from urban Tanzania

Rapid urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa occurs with little land registration, and government-led regularisation schemes often find limited uptake of title deeds by residents. In theory, there could be private and public... Read more...

Martina Manara and Tanner Regan

01 January 2024

Blog
Public disclosure policies don't improve tax collection in Uganda

Public disclosure policies are designed to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. But they can also have negative consequences by showcasing the true extent of tax compliance, write Priya... Read more...

Priya Manwaring and Tanner Regan

29 August 2023

CEP discussion papers
Public disclosure and tax compliance: evidence from Uganda

Public disclosure policies have potential to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. We study the effects of reporting delinquents and recognizing compliers and provide evidence on the soc... Read more...

Priya Manwaring and Tanner Regan

21 July 2023

Journal article
Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi... Read more...

Martina Manara and Tanner Regan

27 September 2022

CEP discussion papers
Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi... Read more...

Martina Manara and Tanner Regan

28 April 2022

Blog
Harnessing the potential of urbanisation in Africa: land and housing policy

Tanner Regan examines the potential for urban planning to encourage public and private investment in land and infrastructure.... Read more...

Tanner Regan

29 March 2022

Journal article
No inventor is an island: social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Faceb... Read more...

Andreas Diemer and Tanner Regan

01 March 2022

Journal article
Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long-Run Evidence from Tanzania

Africa’s demand for urban housing is soaring, even as it faces a proliferation of slums. In this setting, can modest infrastructure investments in greenfield areas where people subsequently build their own houses facilit... Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, Amanda Dahlstrand, Guy Michaels, Dzhamilya Nigmatulina, Ferdinand Rauch and Tanner Regan

01 July 2021

Journal article
Building the City: From Slums to a Modern Metropolis

We model the building of a city, estimate parameters of the model, and calculate welfare losses from institutional frictions encountered in changing land-use. We distinguish formal and slum construction technologies; in ... Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson, Tanner Regan and Anthony J. Venables

01 May 2021

CEP discussion papers
No inventor is an island: social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Faceb... Read more...

Andreas Diemer and Tanner Regan

24 November 2020

Journal article
Life in a slum: Understanding living conditions in Nairobi's slums across time and space

This paper overviews the role of slums in urban Africa, focusing on Nairobi. It reveals the characteristics of slums and how these have changed over time. Spatially disaggregated data show that slum areas are very dense ... Read more...

Julia Bird, Piero Montebruno and Tanner Regan

01 October 2017

SERC Discussion Papers
Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long Run Evidence from Tanzania

What are the long run consequences of planning and providing basic infrastructure in neighborhoods, where people build their own homes? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during ... Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, Amanda Dahlstrand, Guy Michaels, Dzhamilya Nigmatulina, Ferdinand Rauch and Tanner Regan

27 September 2017

Journal article
Building functional cities

The literature views many African cities as dysfunctional with a hodgepodge of land uses and poor "connectivity." One driver of inefficient land uses is construction decisions for highly durable buildings made under weak... Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson, Anthony J. Venables, Tanner Regan and Ilia Samsonov

20 May 2016

SERC Discussion Papers
Building the City: Urban Transition and Institutional Frictions

We model the building of a city, estimate parameters of the model, and calculate welfare losses from institutional frictions encountered in changing land-use. We distinguish formal and slum construction technologies; in ... Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson, Tanner Regan and Anthony J. Venables

27 April 2016

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