Pierre Desrochers

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Pierre Desrochers, Fraser Institute Senior Fellow, is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. His main research interests include economic development, energy, environmental and urban policy and food policy. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Montreal. He spent two years at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland) as a post-doctoral fellow and in 2017 was awarded the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. He has published more than 50 academic articles and over 200 economic columns in various outlets. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, Mr. Desrochers was the Montreal Economic Institute’s Research Director, where he remains an associate researcher.

Recent Research by Pierre Desrochers

— Mar 10, 2023
Printer-friendly version
How Banning Carbon Fuels and Synthetic Products Will Hurt the Environment

How Banning Carbon Fuels and Synthetic Products Will Hurt the Environment is a new essay in the Institute’s series on the ESG (environmental, social and governance) movement. It shows how the development of carbon fuels, refined petroleum products and synthetics such as plastics and composite materials have made it possible to meet the needs of growing and increasingly wealthier populations, while gradually diminishing the human footprint on the landscape. Banning them, especially when the world’s population is now much larger than when they first displaced other inputs and technologies, will only recreate and exacerbate the problems they once solved.

— Feb 3, 2023
Printer-friendly version
The Circular Economy: (Re)discovering the Free Market

The Circular Economy: (Re)discovering the Free Market is the latest installment in the Institute’s essay series on the ESG (environmental, social and governance) movement. It documents how current calls for a centrally-planned “circular economy” ignore the historical evidence that shows, in fact, entrepreneurs and market economies have been innovating ways to re-use industrial byproducts and waste for centuries.

— Oct 8, 2019
Printer-friendly version

The Myths of Local Food Policy: Lessons from the economic and social history of the food system finds that despite common misperceptions, locally-grown food isn’t better for the environment, doesn’t provide a more stable food supply and it isn’t necessarily safer to eat. And locally-grown food often increases prices for consumers since the high cost of land in or near big cities means urban agriculture is expensive.