Joseph A Swanson

Joseph A. Swanson is currently Clinical Professor of Finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management—where he was Professor of Finance from 1975 through 1986, and Adjunct Professor of Finance, 1988-2007. Since 2007 he retains the title of Board Chair of Jos. Swanson & Co., a Milwaukee (WI) based management consulting firm specializing in strategic and financial counsel to firms in the financial services, telecommunications and transportation sector.

His academic degrees are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison: B.S. (Economics & History, 1964) and Ph.D. (Economics, 1968).

Swanson’s academic employment is this: Purdue University (1967-1969), University of Iowa (1970-1974), and Northwestern University (1975-2007). He has taught courses in microeconomic theory, econometrics, time series analysis, corporate financial management, securities analysis, quantitative models of financial market performance, due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, and project finance.

The research record of Joseph Swanson is focused on these themes: optimal capital accumulation, economic history of urban growth, optimal plant location, transportation cost & productivity performance, financial market efficiency with a focus on bond pricing, and auction markets. His current research is focused on applications of finance theory in private equity and project finance.

Among Swanson’s several original constructions in applied economics are these: economies of density, multi-part pricing of transportation services, and combined value auctions. The first of these was in collaboration with Douglas W. Caves and Laurits R. Christensen [Caves, D. W., Christensen, L. R. and J. A. Swanson, " [http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-5533(198111)96%3A4%3C559%3AEPIRAU%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W&cookieSet=1 Productivity Growth, Scale Economies, and Capacity Utilization in U.S. Railroads, 1955-1974,] " American Economic Review, 1981, 71, 994-1002.] ; the latter two came from joint work with John Ledyard [Ledyard, J.O., Swanson, J.A., et. al., " [http://trb.metapress.com/content/n33745l5w2125336/ The First Use of Combined-Value Auction for Transportation Services,] " Interfaces, 2002, 32, 4-12.] .

On leaving the Kellogg School of Management in 1987, Swanson joined the Chicago Corporation where he organized a research and corporate finance team in transportation. That team was actively engaged in the public offerings of the truckload transportation sector. In 1989 he moved to CalFed as its Senior Vice President for Corporate Development, where he executed a sequence of acquisitions and divestitures that were widely-noted. In 1991 Swanson resumed the CEO position at Jos. Swanson & Co.

Joseph Swanson has served, and continues to serve on many corporate boards of directors. He is a founding director of Cargo 360 and Cheetah Software Systems. He is a director of the Walker Group. He served a six-year term as trustee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Board of Pensions, where he chaired its audit committee and served on its investment committee. He is a former trustee (and chair of its endowment committee) of North Shore Country Day School.

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