We examine the impact of institutional ownership on financial reporting discretion,
focusing on whether the impact varies with institutions’ cost of acquiring monitoring
information. Using geographic distance between the firm and the institutional investor
as a proxy for the cost of acquiring monitoring information, we find that corporate
managers are less likely to use financial reporting discretion in the presence of local
monitoring institutions than distant monitoring institutions. We also find that the
impact of monitoring institutions on financial reporting discretion varies with the costs
and benefits of financial reporting discretion