Repo Haircuts and Economic Capital: A Theory of Repo Pricing

A repurchase agreement lets investors borrow cash to buy securities. Financier only lends to securities' market value after a haircut and charges interest. Repo pricing is characterized with its puzzling dual pricing measures: repo haircut and repo spread. This article develops a repo haircut model by designing haircuts to achieve high credit criteria, and identifies economic capital for repo's default risk as the main driver of repo pricing. A simple repo spread formula is obtained that relates...