NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

LITTLE ROCK — Economist who made waves at Ford

William Niskanen, an economist who was dismissed by Ford Motor Co. after bluntly opposing the company’s embrace of trade protection and who later served as a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, died Wednesday in Washington. He was 78.

His death, of a stroke, was announced by the Cato Institute, the libertarian research organization, where he had been chairman for 23 years before stepping down in 2008.

Niskanen taught at the University of California at both Berkeley and Los Angeles, worked as a defense analyst at Rand Corp. and held prominent positions at the Office of Management and Budget and at the Department of Defense.

A few years after joining Ford in 1975 and becoming its chief economist, he was critical of the company when it ended its longtime commitment to free trade and pushed for restrictions on Japanese imports. Niskanen contended that the real challenge to the domestic auto industry came not from Japan, but from the inability of American carmakers to cater to the public’s desire for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. He also thought it inappropriate for corporations to ask Washington for breaks.

In 1984, while at the Council of Economic Advisers, he gave a speech before a group called Women in Government Relations in which he suggested that one reason men were often paid more than women in comparable jobs was because women interrupted their careers to raise children. A White House spokesman said Niskanen had expressed his own views, not those of the administration.

Niskanen later wrote a memoir, Reaganonomics. He praised Reagan for vision and charisma but lamented that as president he had been unable to curtail federal spending.

“In the end,” Niskanen wrote, “there was no Reagan revolution.”