Joseph Swanson is the President of Jos. Swanson & Co. a Milwaukee, Wisconsin based firm that provides strategic and financial counsel to major U.S. companies. Swanson was previously Vice President of The Chicago Corporation, a privately held investment banking firm, and Senior Vice President–Corporate Development at CalFed, Inc. From 1975 through 1986, Swanson was Professor of Finance at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he currently serves as Clinical Professor of Finance.

Jos. Swanson & Co. was founded in 1972. Its engagements in the field of strategy design have been with: BP p.l.c., Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., Canadian National, CSX Corporation, DRI/McGraw- Hill, Ernst & Young LLP, General Electric Company, i2 Technologies, Itel Corporation, Mark VII, Inc., M.S. Carriers, Norfolk Southern, Rockwell International, Schneider National Inc., Sears, Roebuck & Company, SLS Inc., TTX Co., and PepsiAmericas. The firm is also active in providing counsel in the telecommunications sector, where Microsoft Inc., Mobile Telecommunication Technologies Corp., and Southern Wireless, LP have been clients. The company’s clients in the financial services area include: Bank of America, Bank of Montreal, and Citigroup. For the past thirty years, Jos. Swanson & Co. has provided effective litigation support to leading U.S. corporations.

Swanson attended the University of Wisconsin from which he received the Bachelor of Science degree with majors in economics and history in 1964. In 1968 Swanson was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy in economics from the University of Wisconsin. He has taught economics, finance and statistics at the following institutions: Purdue University (1967-1969), the University of Iowa (1970-1974), and Northwestern University (1975-present).

Swanson's academic research covers a wide number of areas including relative price performance in corporate bond markets, the impact of regulation and mergers on firm cost performance, the measurement of productivity change and productivity differentials in transportation companies, optimal plant location, and statistical techniques for cost analysis and economic forecasting. His current research is in the area of efficient auction market systems design.

Joseph Swanson is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Economic Association, and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences. He is an elected member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the national business honorary society.

Joseph Swanson is a director of Walker Forge, Inc.; a trustee, and chair of the audit committee, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Board of Pensions. He is a founding director of Cargo 360. Swanson serves as a member of the Business Advisory Committee of The Transportation Center at Northwestern University. He is a past president, of the Racine Zoological Society. Swanson served as a director of Health Providers Insurance Company and chaired its audit committee. He is a past trustee of Augustana Center (an affiliate of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois) and North Shore Country Day School. At Northwestern University, he was chairman of the University's Budget and Resource Allocation Committee and was its nominee as director of the Evanston Business Investment Company.

Corporate Bankruptcy
Econometrics
Investment Banking
Mechanism Design
Regulation
Transportaion