Abba Ptachya Lerner was born in Romania. He studied economics at the London School of Economics in order to find out why his printing business had failed. He became an assistant lecturer at the LSE after graduation. He moved to the United States in 1937 and taught at the following colleges; Columbia, the University of Virginia, Kansas City, Amherst, The New School for Social Research, Roosevelt, John Hopkins, Michigan State, and the University of California.

Lerner is best known for his work in international trade, Keynesian economics, welfare economics and macroeconomics, in which he created the concept of functional finance. According ot Lerner, if a government desires to increase or decrease aggregate dem and in order to maintain employment, and there exists a balanced budget, the government should run a deficit through fiscal policy. Simply put, Lerner believed that income taxes do not discourage risk taking because of the availability of loss affects. ( These ideas are commonly attributed to John Maynard Keynes) Lerner was a very strong proponent of free markets. In fact, you can definitely see his influence in the works of Friedrich August von Hayek.

Works by Abba Ptachya Lerner:

• The Economics of Control: Principles of Welfare Economics
  
• Selected Economic Writings of Abba P. Lerner
  
• The Concept of Monopoly and the Measurement of Monopoly Power, Review of Economic Studies
  
• The Diagrammatical Representation of Demand Conditions in International Trade, Economica
  
• The Economics and Politics of Consumer Sovereignty, AER
  
• Functional Finance and the Federal Debt, Social Research
  
• OPEC-A Plan-If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them, Atlantic Economic Journal
  
• The Symmetry Between Import and Export Taxes