[2] After earning his doctoral degree, 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.

[2] 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.

In 1972, he returned to public service as assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget, though his internal criticisms of Nixon administration policy would make his tenure at OMB short.

[5][6] Niskanen left Washington and returned to academia, becoming professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1972, where he remained until he became chief economist of Ford Motor Company in 1975.

[2] He quickly became critical of Ford's corporate culture and its failure to follow consumer trends, such as the 1970s desire for more fuel-efficient cars because of rising gas prices resulting from OPEC constraints on oil supply.

Foreign automakers, especially Japanese companies, were quick to exploit American consumers' demand for more fuel-efficient cars, gaining a growing share of the U.S. market in the 1970s.

Niskanen's comment was condemned in 1984, including criticism from Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale, who claimed it exemplified a lack of respect toward women by the Reagan administration.

Secretary Regan took offense at the comment and, after becoming President Reagan's chief of staff, blocked Niskanen's ascendancy to the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers after Martin Feldstein left to return to Harvard.

The book was for a long time out of print, but was reissued with several additional essays as, William Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Public Economics (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1994).

Washington Post columnist Lou Cannon, author of the biography President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, described the book as "a definitive and notably objective account of administration economic policies.

His widow, Kathryn Washburn, had worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and United States Department of the Interior before entering the non-profit sector.