Scholarly Contributions
Niskanen was a prominent contributor to public choice theory, a field of both economics and political science that examines the behavior of politicians and other government officials. Public choice eschewed the traditional notion that these agents are motivated by selfless interest in the public good, and instead considered them as typically self-interested, like other agents. His chief contribution to public choice theory was the budget-maximizing model – the notion that bureaucrats will attempt to maximize their agency's budget and authority. He presented this theory in 1971 book Bureaucracy and Representative Government.
Read more about this topic: William A. Niskanen
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