Edward Tower, Duke University

Topics include the comparative development of European countries; history of European exchange rate policy; the return to the gold standard after World War I; Post World War I reparations payments; the propagation in Europe of the great depression; Nazi Germany’s economic warfare; the building of the European Union; current issues in European Union economic policy; theories of economic growth.

Students will be asked to write a short essay each week. These will be combined into a 15 page essay to cap the semester. There will also be a midterm exam and a final exam.

Resources for these courses
Particularly useful are

Michel Artis, Professor of Economics, European University Institute, Florence, and Frederick Nixson, Professor of Economics, University of Manchester, The Economics of the European Union. September 2001.
Robert Barro, Determinants of Economic Growth. 1998. MIT.
Doug Irwin, Free Trade Under Fire, 2002. Princeton.
Doug Irwin, History of Protectionism (rough title), 1998 (rough year).
Peter Temin, Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? MIT.

The following periodicals:
The Economist, European Affairs, Journal of Common Market Studies, Bulletin of the European Communities.

Ed Tower

Research has focused on

1. exchange-rate regimes and monetary and fiscal policy under fixed and flexible exchange rates.
2. the effects of tariffs and quotas under fixed and flexible exchange rates.
3. building applied general equilibrium models to assess the affects of protectionism and alternative tax structures.
4. tariff games: specifically analyzing the interactions between non-competive firms (monopolies and oligopolies) and the government, when the firm wants the government to protect it and the government wants the firm to keep jobs high and prices low.
5. tariff and quota warfare between countries.
6. the political economy of protection: Specifically, what does protection cost US firms who buy congressional votes with campaign contributions? I have looked at sugar, steel, textiles and autos.

Biography
B.A. in Physics (Harvard College), MA and PhD in Economics (Harvard University. Professor of Economics at Duke. Interested in a variety of fields (financial policy, development economics, macro and microeconomics) and particularly International Economics (trade and finance). Was Consultant to the World Bank (1982-1997). Editor of Economics Reading Lists, Course Outlines, Exams, Puzzles and Problems Chapel Hill, Eno River Press, September 1995, 6765 pages, 25 volume set of teaching materials (now in its fourth edition). His latest articles include: .”Protectionism, Labor Mobility, and Immiserizing Growth in Developing Countries,” (with J. Gilbert). Economics Letters, March 2002, 135-40 and “Is Talk Cheap? Buying Congressional Testimony with Campaign Contributions,” (with R.Gibbs and O.Gokcekus) Journal of Policy Reform, Volume 5, Issue 3, 2002. 127-132. Forthcoming: “The Public Choice Approach to Protectionism,” (with W. H. Kaempfer and T. D. Willett), in The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Charles K. Rowley (ed.) Routledge, 19 pp. and “Rational Pessimism: Predicting Equity Returns by Tobin’s q and Price/Earnings Ratios” (with M. Harney), in The Journal of Investing, 20pp.; “School Choice: Money, Race and Congressional Voting on Vouchers,” (with O. Gokcekus and J. J. Phillips) Public Choice, 20 pp.