Home away from Home: Geography of Information and Local Investors

Gennaro Bernile; Alok Kumar; Johan Sulaeman

doi:10.1093/rfs/hhv004

Home away from Home: Geography of Information and Local Investors

Gennaro Bernile¹; Alok Kumar²; Johan Sulaeman³

¹ Singapore Management University · ² University of Miami · ³ Southern Methodist University and National University of Singapore

Review of Financial Studies 2015

We develop a 10-K-based multidimensional measure of firm locations. Using this measure, we show that firm-level information is geographically distributed and institutional investors are able to exploit the resulting information asymmetry. Specifically, institutional investors overweigh firms whose 10-K frequently mentions the investors' state even when those firms are not headquartered locally and earn superior returns on those stocks. These ownership and performance patterns are stronger among hard-to-value firms. Local investor performance increases with the degree of local bias and with the local economic exposure of portfolio firms. Overall, geographical variation in firm-level information generates economically significant location-based information asymmetry.

DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhv004
Volume: 28 (7)
Pages: 2009-2049
Language: en
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