This is a Cato special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. Before William A Niskanen was chairman of the Cato Institute, his resume was already that of one of America's most impressive thinkers, having produced voluminous and groundbreaking work in economics.

William Niskanen died today at the age of 78.

John Samples, the director of the Cato Institute's Center for Representative Government,

reflects on the life of his friend and colleague.

The most pressing memory at this moment I have of Bill Neskannon is a sort of celebration we had at Cato of his 70th birthday and as part of that I

was passing his office and he told me to come in and said take a look at this and it was a

letter from Lawrence Summers very prominent economist and also at that time

president of Harvard University and it was a happy birthday message from

Larry Summers and in a letter Summers said to Bill Niskannen the most honest man in DC.

And I think in many respects that characterizes the man.

If you want to think about the character of Bill Niskanen

as I have lived with him and worked with him over the last decade.

He's the most honest man in D.C. and he let the chips fall where they may on these issues and on politics.

In the late 1980s, Cato President Ed Crane was talking about Reaganomics at an event and

he gestured toward a table in which Bill

Niskannon was sitting with some other former Reagan administration

economists and he said look here's Bill Poole here's William Niskannon these

are all good small government economists, free market economists,

which may go some distance explaining why they are former Reagan administration officials and what surprised

me most and something that Ed Crane likes to point out regularly is that there was a very short

time period between Bill Nusanen leaving the White House and coming to the Cato Institute.

It was a very conscious choice. You know, I never talked to him about it, but it was a striking choice.

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