Tracking the history of sovereign defaults

Bank of Canada has assembled a new broad database on global public debt default. It shows that after sovereign delinquency had exceeded 5% of outstanding debt in the 1980s, it declined alongside falling interest rates to below 1% in the 2000s and has remained low despite the global financial and euro sovereign crises. In a longer (200 year) context sovereign default ratios have moved in long cycles, each stretching over several decades.

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