William Niskanen
| William A. Niskanen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 13, 1933 Bend, Oregon, U.S.A. |
| Died |
(aged 78) Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.A. |
| Education | Harvard University, B.A.; University of Chicago, M.A. and Ph.D. |
| Occupation | Economist |
| Known for | Reaganomics |
| Board member of | Cato Institute |
William Arthur Niskanen (March 13, 1933, Bend, Oregon – October 26, 2011, Washington, D.C.) was an American economist noted as one of the architects of President Ronald Reagan's economic programme and for his contributions to public choice theory. He was also a long-time chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute.
Niskanen received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1954. He pursued graduate study of economics at the University of Chicago, where his teachers included Milton Friedman and other prominent economists who were then revolutionizing economics, public policy, and law with ideas that would come to be known as the Chicago school of economics. Niskanen received his M.A. in 1955 and his doctorate in 1962, writing his dissertation on the economics of alcoholic beverage sales.
After Chicago, Niskanen joined the RAND Corporation as a defense policy analyst in 1957, using his economic and mathematical modeling skills to analyze and improve military efficiency. Among his accomplishments was developing a 400-line linear programming model of the Air Force transport system. His programmer for the model was a young William F. Sharpe, who would later win the Nobel economics prize.
Because of his work at RAND, the incoming Kennedy administration appointed Niskanen director of special studies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. There, he became one of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's original Pentagon "whiz kids" who used statistical analysis to examine Defense Department operations.
During his time at the Pentagon, Niskanen became disillusioned with the nation's political leadership, later claiming that the president and other executive branch officials "lied with ... regularity" to the public. He frequently quipped that this disillusionment sometimes caused him to question whether the United States truly landed on the moon in 1969.
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