The economic benefits of geographical proximity have been recognized in the portfolio choice, asset pricing, and
banking literatures. Surprisingly, the previous corporate finance literature has paid relatively less attention to the impact
of geographical proximity on corporate behavior. In this paper, we study whether geographical proximity to institutional
shareholders influences corporate governance of firms. Our main conjecture is that the monitoring effects of local
institutions would improve corporate governance, particularly when other forms of governance are weak.
Consistent with this conjecture, we find that firms with high concentration of local institutional investors have better
internal governance and are more profitable. Those firms are also less likely to be associated with undesirable corporate
activities such as aggressive earnings management or option backdating and are less likely to be targets of class action
lawsuits. Further, managers of such firms exhibit a lower propensity to engage in ‘‘empire building’’ and less likely to ‘‘lead
the quiet life’’. Monitoring by local institutions is more effective when there is a large local concentration of longer-term,
‘‘dedicated’’ investors. Examining the local monitoring mechanisms, we find that local institutions are more likely to
introduce shareholder proposals, increase CEO turnover and reduce excess compensation. Taken together, our results
indicate that local institutions are more effective monitors of corporate behavior because monitoring costs vary inversely
with distance.
These findings extend the emerging corporate finance literature on the monitoring activities of local shareholders.
Our evidence also adds a new twist to the information-based explanation for local bias. If monitoring activities of local
institutions improve firm performance, evidence of superior returns from local investments of institutions might not
be due to their superior local information. Investors might earn higher returns simply because they free-ride on the
monitoring activities of other local investors. The true source of superior performance of local institutions is the
monitoring activities of ‘‘other’’ local institutions. We hope to investigate these interesting issues in our future
research.