Josh Lerner is an American economist known for his research in venture capital, private equity, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

[4] He later joined the faculty at the Harvard Business School, where he was eventually promoted as the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking.

[2] Between 2008 and 2010 Lerner was a member of the Advisory Board of The Abraaj Group and a paid consultant to the firm until 2017.

[5] As well as authoring HBS case studies on the firm and leading the Abraaj Academy,[6] Lerner wrote a report used by Abraaj as a validation of its own questionable portfolio valuation methodologies,[7] later described by Lerner as an inadvertent mistake.

[8] 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.