Profile Major Works Resources

William A. Niskanen, 1933-2011.

Chicago-trained  economist, of the "Public Choice" school.  

William A. Niskanen obtained his B.A. at Harvard in 1954, and his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1962.  In the 1960s, Niskanen worked as an analyst at the US Department of Defense, and later at the Office of Management and Budget.

Niskanen is perhaps best known for his 1971 model of the "budget-maximizing bureaucrat", i.e. how government policy is guided (and distorted) by the incentives of government agencies and bureaucrats to increase their budgets and authority rather than serve the general public interest.

Niskanen worked as the lead economist at the Ford Motor Company in the mid-1970s.   Niskanen became an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, and served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1981 to 1985.  Niskanen later became the head of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.

 

  

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Major Works of William A. Niskanen

  • Bureaucracy and Representative Government, 1971
  • Structural Reform and the Federal Budget Process, 1973.
  • "Bureaucrats and Politicians", 1975, JLawE
  • Reaganomics, 1988
  • Reflections of a Political Economist, 2008.

 
HET

 
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Resources on  William Niskanen

  • William A. Niskanen's hompage at Cato Institute
  • "In Memoriam: William A. Niskanen" at Cato Institute (pdf)
  • Niskanen obituary at NY Times, 2011
  • Niskanen obituary in Washington Post
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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