We employ the quality of governance to study the impact of local institutional context on foreign subsidiaries' performance. We propose and empirically document that local institutional quality has growth-enhancing effects on subsidiary growth. More specifically, we show that political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and rule of low are positively and significantly related to subsidiaries' output. Our findings suggest that, apart from resources and market considerations, institutional constructs should be included as influential predictors in the general models investigating subsidiary performance.