Showcase your ideas on public policy and the role of markets by entering our essay competition. $12,000 in cash prizes will be awarded with $4,000 of this designated just for high school students! Winning essays may be published in Fraser Institute journals and authors will have the opportunity to experience the peer review process.

Categories and Prizes: High School, Undergraduate, Graduate.

1st Prize: $1,500

2nd Prize: $1,000

3rd Prize: $750

4th Prize: $500

5th Prize: $250

2023 Essay Contest -- What would our Essential Scholars say about the world today?

Unprecedented is a word that has been used repeatedly to describe all aspects of the last two years: global pandemic, centralized lockdowns, overwhelmed health care facilities, high inflation, revolutionized AI, war in Ukraine, etc. Governments often respond to remarkable moments in history by creating policies they feel would help address the situation. What insight can our Essential Scholars series offer the current situations and events? Relying on the ideas of one of our Essential Scholars, construct an essay that describes a scholar’s response, explanation, or rebuttal to a current event. You can use a scholar’s economic theory to examine unprecedented situations, propose potential policies that a scholar would have put forward, or suggest how certain existing policies would have been adapted by a particular Essential Scholar.

Example questions:

• What would Milton Friedman argue should be a government’s response to inflation?
• In a post-COVID world, what would Jane Jacobs say about the state of our cities?
• How does James Buchanan’s thoughts on public choice theory apply to the economic sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine?
• How can Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction help us understand the rise and fall of businesses?
• What would one of the Essential Scholars say about Canada’s current housing and rent situation?

Visit www.essentialscholars.org to read our Essential Scholars books online and watch the accompanying videos

Submission deadline: June 1, 2023