This study examines the relative impact of seven factors, including herding, sentiments, and institutional quality, on varying levels of weak form market efficiency across 50 stock markets. The analysis focuses on the profitability of technical analysis trading strategies to address issues with other (statistical) market efficiency measures related to information and transaction costs (Griffin et al., 2010). Proxies for herding, institutional quality, and equity market development consistently emerge as the most significant cross-country determinants of relative market efficiency. In contrast, proxies for fractionalization, chaos, and investor protection play comparatively weaker roles. We also find no clear link between market efficiency and sentiment proxies.

Theoretical and empirical evidence have long acknowledged that children affect the financial decisions of their parents. However, the literature is limited to the study of the impact of dependent children. This study examines the impact of both dependent and independent children on key financial decisions of Chinese parents using data on over 20,000 individuals from the 2016 Wave of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We demonstrate how number, gender, and age of children could influence parents’ financial decisions differently through the various stages of their parenthood. Our findings highlight the strong and persistent saving for children motive in Chinese households.

We study the relative importance of social factors (including household, workplace, and neighborhood peer effects) and personal characteristics (including age, gender, tax rates, and funds under management) for asset allocation decisions. The most important factors (in order) are household peer effects, personal characteristics and workplace peer effects. Neighborhood peer effects and financial advice play a less important role. We use instrumental variables for both household and workplace peer effects and find results that are consistent with causal peer effects.