This study examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on sovereign CDS spreads using a large sample of countries. We show how sovereign CDS spreads have widened significantly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the most conservative estimate, a 1% increase in COVID-19 infections...

The CDS Big Bang introduced two standard coupons for CDS trading. We exploit the setting of the two standard coupons as a natural experiment to quantify the components of the bid-ask spreads in over-the-counter markets. We find that a significant portion of the difference in the bid-ask spread...