Professor Rowley was past President of the European Public Choice Society, and he taught at the University of Nottingham, University of York and University of Newcastle upon Tyne before migrating from England to the United States in 1984. He was Founding Editor of the International Review of Law and Economics (1981-87) and then jointly edited Public Choice (with Robert D. Tollison).

He wrote/edited thirty-six books and over one hundred and fifty articles in the areas of industrial organization, welfare economics, law and economics, public choice, and classical liberal political economy. His books include The British Monopolies Commission; Steel and Public Policy; Welfare Economics: A Liberal Restatement (with Alan T. Peacock); The Right to Justice and Trade Protection in the United States (with Willem Thorbecke and Richard E. Wagner). He also edited Public Choice Theory (three volumes), Social Choice Theory (three volumes), The Encyclopedia of Public Choice (two volumes, with Friedrich Schneider), Deficits (with James M. Buchanan and Robert D. Tollison), Democracy and Public Choice, The Economics of Budget Deficits (two volumes, with William F. Shughart II and Robert D. Tollison), Property Rights and the Limits of Democracy, The Political Economy of the Minimal State, Classical Liberalism and Civil Society; and The Origins of Law and Economics: Essays by the Founding Fathers (with Francesco Parisi). He edited a ten-volume series, The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, and his last book was a biography of James M. Buchanan, James McGill Buchanan: Political Economist and Economic Philosopher.