In the following interview I asked Richard Zeckhauser to recount what it was like to be part of the “Whiz Kids,” the name given to a group of experts with which Robert McNamara (then Secretary of Defense and later President of the World Bank) surrounded himself in order to turn around the management of the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s. The group sought to shape government decision making by bringing in economic analysis, operations research, game theory, and computing, as well as by implementing new methods, such as Planning Programming Budgeting System (PPBS). Their efforts did a lot to extend and solidify the influence of the principles of benefit cost analysis in U.S. Federal government decisions.
The interview with Richard is a complement to Alain Enthoven’s new article, “How Systems Analysis, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis or Benefit-Cost Analysis First Became Influential in Federal Government Program Decision-Making," appearing in the upcoming Summer 2019 Journal of Benefit Cost Analysis (Volume 10, No. 2). There Alain recounts in detail his experience as a Whiz Kid and the origins of the cost-benefit analysis movement in government as a tool for planning and budgeting.