How did the 2003 prescription drug re-importation bill pass the house?

Professor Grabowski specializes in the investigation of economics in the pharmaceutical industry, government regulation of business, and the economics of innovation. His specific interests within these fields include intellectual property and generic competition issues, the effects of government policy actions, and the costs and returns to pharmaceutical R&D. He has over one hundred peer reviewed articles analyzing the economics of pharmaceuticals and also several books and monograph publications. Professor Grabowski has testified several times before Congress on the issues of FDA regulation, health care reform, drug innovation and generic competition and vaccine policies. He has received numerous awards and professional recognition including a special issue of essays published in his honor in 2011 in the International Journal of the Economics of Business. He also has served as an advisor to various government and business organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Federal Trade Commission, and the General Accounting Office. The US Congress has recognized the significant role that a paper he published with Duke colleagues David Ridley and Jeff Moe had in the passage of legislation that incentivized development of new therapies for neglected diseases through the creation of priority review vouchers.

Professor Tower specializes in finance, computable general equilibrium modeling, macroeconomics, development economics, microeconomics, and managerial economics. He conducts a majority of his research within the study of trade and development, exploring a variety of variables from tariffs, quotas, and time zone arbitrage, to equities, mutual funds, and index mutual funds. Since he began publishing his work in 1965, he has contributed over 130 articles to leading academic journals and has had several books, chapters, and papers appear in print. Some of his more recent writings include, “School Choice: Money, Race, and Congressional Voting on Vouchers,” completed in collaboration with O. Gokcekus and J. Phillips; “Rational Pessimism: Predicting Equity Returns by Tobin’s q and Price/Earnings Ratio” with M. Harney; and “Predicting Equity Returns for 37 Countries: Tweaking the Gordon Formula” with K. Reinker. Much of his work pertaining to U.S. trade policy has been used to determine congressional voting on protectionist issues based on campaign contributions. His work on financial issues has also played an important role in determining the value of the U.S. stock market. His latest studies involved an investigation of congressional voting on importation of ethical drugs and predicting returns on both foreign and U.S. equity.