Functional finance

Functional finance is an economic theory proposed by Abba P. Lerner, based on effective demand principles and chartalism. It states that government should finance itself to meet explicit goals, such as taming the business cycle, achieving full employment, ensuring growth, and low inflation.

The principal ideas behind functional finance can be summarized as:

Lerner postulated that government's fiscal policy should be governed by three rules:

Lerner's ideas were most heavily in use during the Post-World War II economic expansion, when they became basis for most textbook presentations of Keynesian economics and the basis for policy. Thus when Keynesian policy become under fire in the late 60's and early 70's it was Lerner's idea of functional finance most people were attacking. During the post-war period, U.S. unemployment reached a low of 2.9% in 1953 when the inflation rate averaged at 1.1%.

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