Publications
Publications
- May 2021
- Journal of Accounting Research
The Firm Next Door: Using Satellite Images to Study Local Information Advantage
By: Jung Koo Kang, Lorien Stice-Lawrence and Forester Wong
Abstract
We use novel satellite data that track the number of cars in the parking lots of 92,668 stores for 71 publicly listed U.S. retailers to study the local information advantage of institutional investors. We establish car counts as a timely measure of store-level performance and find that institutional investors adjust their holdings in response to the performance of local stores, and that these trades are profitable on average. These results suggest that local investors have an advantage when processing information about nearby operations. However, some institutional investors do not adjust for the quality of their local information and continue to rely on local signals even when they are poor predictors of firm performance and returns. This overreliance on poor local information is reduced for institutional investors with greater industry expertise and those with greater incentives to maximize short-term trading profits.
Keywords
Satellite Images; Store-level Performance; Institutional Investors; Local Advantage; Overweighting; Processing Costs; Alternative Data; Big Data; Emerging Technologies; Information; Quality; Institutional Investing; Decision Making; Behavioral Finance
Citation
Kang, Jung Koo, Lorien Stice-Lawrence, and Forester Wong. "The Firm Next Door: Using Satellite Images to Study Local Information Advantage." Journal of Accounting Research 59, no. 2 (May 2021): 713–750.