Josh Lerner is an American economist known for his research in

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a typ ...

, and innovation and

entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

. He is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA ...

Early life

Josh Lerner graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, and he earned a PhD in Economics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Career

Lerner worked for the

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in e ...

. He was also a research fellow in the International Security program at the

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs The Robert and Renée Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, also known as the Belfer Center, is a research center located within the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, in the United States. From 2017 until his death in Oc ...

in 1990-1991. He later joined the faculty at the Harvard Business School, where he was eventually promoted as the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking. He is a member of the European Corporate Governance Institute. Lerner is the author of several books. He won the

Axiom Business Book Award An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy o ...

and the PROSE Award for Excellence in Business for ''Boulevard of Broken Dreams'' in 2009. Between 2008 and 2010 Lerner was a member of the Advisory Board of

The Abraaj Group The Abraaj Group was a private equity firm operating in six continents that is currently in liquidation due to accusations of fraud. The firm was founded by Pakistani businessman Arif Naqvi and was based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. History ...

and a paid consultant to the firm until 2017. As well as authoring HBS case studies on the firm and leading the Abraaj Academy, Lerner wrote a report used by Abraaj as a validation of its own questionable portfolio valuation methodologies, later described by Lerner as an inadvertent mistake. Abraaj filed for provisional liquidation in 2018 with the founder Arif Naqvi the subject of a criminal investigation in the United States for the misappropriation of $250 million in investor funding.

Selected publications

Books

Lerner is an author and co-author of several books including: * * * * * * * * *

References

Living people Yale University alumni Harvard University alumni Harvard Business School faculty 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-business-academic-bio-stub