CEI to Award Pierre Desrochers the 2017 Julian L. Simon Memorial Award

Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) announced the 2017 recipient of the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award, Associate Professor of geography at the University of Toronto, Dr. Pierre Desrochers. The award will be presented at CEI’s annual dinner in Washington, D.C. on June 7 at the Marriott Marquis. 

Each year since 2001, CEI honors free-market economist and Professor Julian Simon by presenting the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award to an individual whose work supports the vision that mankind is the ultimate resource.

“Dr. Desrochers has carried the torch for Julian Simon’s legacy for more than two decades,” said CEI President Kent Lassman. “His defense of modern large-scale agriculture and critique of the concept of ‘food miles,’ in The Locavore’s Dilemma informs any reasoned discussion on how to improve the health and wealth of people everywhere. We are thrilled to present this award to Pierre and look forward to his future contributions to understanding how the exchange of goods and localized ingenuity can inform policy decisions.”

Dr. Desrochers is Interim Director, Institute for Management and Innovation at the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He has published more than 200 op-eds and columns in, among other outlets, The American, Tech Central Station, PERC Reports, Ideas on Liberty, Salon, The Daily Beast, Spiked!, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, Reader’s Digest (Canada), L’AGEFI, LeMonde.fr as well as publishing numerous research papers and scholarly articles.

Julian L. Simon (1932-1998) was a free-market economist and business professor known for his optimism about the future of mankind. His groundbreaking research built the case for how human ingenuity would permit natural resources to support the world’s increasing population, demonstrating human beings are an asset to the planet, not a liability.

For more information about CEI’s annual dinner or the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award visit cei.org/dinner.

This news release has been updated to clarify the emphasis of Dr. Desrochers’ research.