The tenets of agency theory suggest that: 1) managers may pursue investment strategies that are at
odds with shareholder value, and 2) effective governance mechanisms can improve the quality of
managerial decision-making and enhance the outcomes of corporate investment. Accordingly, using an
agency theory lens, we hypothesize that the financial outcomes of global diversification are contingent
on the quality of themultinational firm’s corporate governance: high (poor) quality corporate governance
is associated with positive (negative) financial consequences attributable to global diversification. Using
a sample of 5985 firm-year observations over the period 2002 through 2006, we find support for our
hypothesis. The results are robust to using three different measures of global diversification, three
different measures of financial outcomes (one accounting-based and two market-based measures), and
two econometric methods to control for the endogeneity of the diversification decision.