Nathan B. Anderson

Nathan Anderson joined the Institute of Government and Public Affairs in 2006. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Anderson’s areas of expertise include public finance and urban economics. He is particularly interested in local government finance and most of his research focuses on the property tax.

Anderson said he was drawn to IGPA because of the "quality of the faculty and the diversity of their approaches to a variety of important public policy issues."

Anderson is currently working on understanding the motivations for placing limits on local government taxing powers.

"All but six of the forty-eight continental states have placed some form of limitation on the property taxation carried out by their local governments," he said. "It has always been assumed that the presence of these limitations implies a mistrust of local government."

Anderson’s research examines both historical and contemporary data to consider another motivation for these limits. "This research could also suggest institutional reforms that would make the property tax relatively more popular."

Nathan Anderson received his undergraduate degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He received his Master’s degree and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.