The spread between unsecured and repo rates (collateral spread) fluctuates substantially and is negative on a significant portion of days. Recent theoretical work argues that collateral spreads are determined by a constrained-arbitrage relation between the unsecured rate, the repo rates, and the...

Repo rates frequently exceed unsecured rates in practice. As an explanation, this paper derives a constrained-arbitrage relation between the unsecured rate, the repo rate, and the illiquidity adjusted expected rate of return of the underlying collateral. The theory is based on unsecured...

We show that liquidity risk is priced in the cross section of returns on credit default swaps (CDSs). We measure CDS market illiquidity by aggregating deviations of credit index levels from their no-arbitrage values implied by the index constituents' CDS spreads, and we construct a tradable...