Since 2014, the Bank of Canada (BoC) has maintained a comprehensive database of sovereign defaults to systematically measure and aggregate the nominal value of the different types of sovereign government debt in default. The database draws on published datasets compiled by various public and private sector sources. It combines elements of these sources with new information to develop comprehensive estimates of stocks of government obligations in default. These include bonds and other marketable securities, as well as bank loans and official loans, valued in US dollars, for the years 1960 to 2023, on both a country-by-country and a global basis. The database is posted on the BoC’s website and is updated annually in partnership with the Bank of England (BoE). Regular updates of the BoC–BoE database are useful to researchers analyzing the economic and financial effects of individual sovereign defaults and, importantly, the impacts on global financial stability from episodes involving multiple sovereign defaults […]