Beyond a bias toward local stocks, investors prefer companies in certain cities over others. This study uses the geographic network of investor-followed stocks from stock watchlists to identify intercity investment preferences in China. We measure the city-pair connectivity by its likelihood of sharing an investor in common whose stock watchlist is highly concentrated in the firms of that city pair. We find that a higher connectivity-weighted aggregate stock demand-to-supply ratio across connected cities is associated with higher stock valuations, higher turnover, better liquidity, and lower cost of equity for firms in the focal city. The effects are robust to controls for geographic proximity and the broad investor base, are stronger among small firms, extend to stock return predictability, and imply excess intercity return comovement. Our results suggest that city connectivity revealed on the stock watchlist helps identify network factors in asset pricing.

Beyond a bias toward local stocks, investors prefer companies in certain cities over others. This study uses the geographic network of investor-followed stocks from stock watchlists to identify intercity investment preferences in China. We measure the city-pair connectivity by its likelihood of sharing an investor in common whose stock watchlist is highly concentrated in the firms of that city pair. We find that a higher connectivity-weighted aggregate stock demand-to-supply ratio across connected cities is associated with higher stock valuations, higher turnover, better liquidity, and lower cost of equity for firms in the focal city. The effects are robust to controls for geographic proximity and the broad investor base, are stronger among small firms, extend to stock return predictability, and imply excess intercity return comovement. Our results suggest that city connectivity revealed on the stock watchlist helps identify network factors in asset pricing.

基于新经济地理学和投资学的交叉视角，大量研究发现风险投资机构倾向于投资其所在地附近的企业。French and Poterba(1991)发现，美国投资者更愿意将资金投资于本国资本市场，而忽略了国外的投资机会，因而将其称为本国偏好之谜Covaland Moskowitz(1999)最早将本国偏好转移到本地偏好（local bias）发现风险投资更乐意投资本地企业或者在距离上离自己办公地址更近的企业；Ivkovic and Weisbenner（2005）、Cumming and Dai（2009）、Brown etal(2011)、Hochberg and Rauh（2013）、李志萍和罗国锋等（2014）等也得出了同样的结论。 国外学者的研究主要围绕独立风险投资的本地偏好成因和经济后果展开国内学者注意到风险投资类型的重要影响作用尤其是本地风险投资机构的本地偏好成因及其经济后果研究，但在我国制度环境下，相比于从本地异地视角，从政府风险投资视角研究本地偏好能够更加深入地揭示本地偏好的成因。现有文献更多地利用信息不对称和心理学理论对本地偏好进行解释，但这并不足以解释政府风险投资机构的本地偏好。因此，本文试图从政府干预风险投资市场的动机出发，依托政府职能理论和官员激励理论解释政府风险投资机构的本 地偏好，以丰富对本地偏好成因的文献解读。 研究结果发现：相较于独立风险投资机构而言，政府风险投资机构的本地偏好程度更高；而且政府绝对控股的风险投资机构本地偏好更强；在市场化进程较高的地区，政府干预程度更低，政府风险投资的本地偏好程度会减弱。本文的创新之处在于：（1）从政府干预风险投资市场的动机出发，利用政府职能理论和官员激励理论对政府风险投资机构的本地偏好成因进行解释并加以实证检验，（2）揭示了政府控股程度对本地偏好的影响。

The current study documents an interesting phenomenon that retail investors prefer to invest in stocks listed at the stock exchange that is geographically close to them in China. This pattern is robust when we control for the well-documented local bias within a country. Among companies with similar distances to both stock exchanges, investors still display a much stronger tendency to invest in locally-listed companies. Among stocks with similar distances to both stock exchanges, those listed in Shanghai (Shenzhen) co-move more in returns and volume, with the benchmark at the Shanghai (Shenzhen) stock exchange. Such a preference for local exchange seems not to be motivated by information advantage, because investors do not obtain abnormal returns from their trades on stocks listed nearby. Our findings provide additional evidence that non-information-based familiarity bias induces investment and that such investor biases and exchange-level sentiment influence asset price formation.