William Arthur ‘Bill’ Niskanen [March 13, 1833 – October 26, 2011], a political economist, was Chairman of the Cato Institute. He is known for his theory of the budget-maximizing bureaucrat and public choice theory that powered an influential career advising policy leaders and publishing on contemporary policy and governance issues. His classic work is Bureaucracy and Representative Government (1971) which led to other books, such as Reaganomics (1988), and numerous scholarly articles and commentaries. He received his B.A. from Harvard (1954), and his M.A. (1955) and Ph.D. (1962) in economics from the University of Chicago. His career path included work as a defense analyst at the Rand Institute (1957), director of special studies at the Department of Defense as one of the ‘whiz kids’, the Institute for Defense Analysis (1964-1972), assistant director of OMB (1972), professor at the University of California at Berkeley (1972-1975), chief economist at Ford Motor Company (1975-1980), member of the Council of Economic Advisors (1980-1985), and then his long career at the Cato Institute (1985-2011) from which he retired as chairman emeritus.