Credit rating agencies have come under increased scrutiny since the financial crisis. Their failure to recognise the threats to the financial system prior to the crisis coupled with their steady downgrading of European sovereign debt has led to much criticism, especially from European...

Using a novel proxy of investors' speculative demand constructed from online search interest in "concept stocks", we examine how speculative demand affects the returns and trading volume of Chinese stock indices. We find that returns and trading volume increase with the contemporaneous...