Using national data on external debt disseminated on the World Bank’s Quarterly External Debt Statistics (QEDS) and creditor/market data on external debt, the JEDH provides comparisons of individual country data for three broad instrument categories: loans + deposits, debt securities, and trade credits. These comparisons refer to the all maturities data in the Joint External Debt Hub (JEDH) series and to the aggregate of the short- and long-term data in QEDS. Comparison tables are prepared for countries that participate in the QEDS, based on the mappings presented in Table 1: Comparator (QEDS/JEDH) Table, as described in the metadata.

The data sets for the creditor/market and debtor/national data sources will differ as the coverage is different. In general, it might be expected that the debtor/national data exceeds  the creditor/market data for loans and deposits, and for debt securities. For instance nonresident purchases of bonds issued in the domestic economy are not covered in the creditor/market data nor are deposits by nonresident nonbanks. Also, for recent quarters bilateral loans and trade credits data from creditor sources are not available.

On the other hand, if residents are significant purchasers of the international debt securities covered in the creditor/market data, such as might occur in international financial centers, the creditor/ market data for debt securities could exceed the national data.

For each individual debtor it is important to view their metadata when analyzing the information in this table. Research has shown that difference between the debtor/national and creditor/market data, particularly as these differences develop over time, can have important informational content. See BIS paper on comparison of creditor and debtor data on short term external debt.