I’m a UK-based economist and credit analyst. A focus throughout my professional career — which has spanned work at non-profits, central banks, investment banks and a 20+ year stint at S&P Global — is the credit standing of governments.
While working at the Bank of Canada in 2012-13, my colleagues and I developed a unique database of defaults by sovereigns on debt owed to official and private creditors. You can download the 2023 vintage of what is now known as the Bank of Canada (BoC) – Bank of England (BoE) Sovereign Default Database and our associated research from:
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2023/07/staff-analytical-note-2023-10/ and https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/research-datasets.
Since returning to the UK in 2014–where I worked at the Bank of England, retiring in 2021–I’ve continued to collaborate with BoC and BoE staff to further develop the database.
Why is the BoC-BoE sovereign default database unique? Because it is the only database in the public domain that captures all types of sovereign debt in default owed to public and private sector creditors. Previous databases, including one I intermittently published between 1994 and 2006 while at S&P, mostly focused on foreign currency bank loans and foreign and local currency bonds. None pulled together data on the various types of public creditor claims in default. And none provided data on governments’ domestic arrears. Ours does this both on a country and global basis, with amounts calculated in current U.S. dollars, for the years 1960 though 2023.
In this blog I’ll discuss this ongoing project and what I’ve learned, and am still learning, about the dynamics driving sovereign defaults.
David T. Beers 