Forecasting the world economy is a di¢ cult task given the complex interre-lationships within and across countries …, …rst, at ranking various forecasting methods in terms offorecast accuracy and, second, at checking whether methods … forecasting di-rectly aggregate variables (direct approaches) outperform methods based onthe aggregation of country …

forecasting euro area manufacturing production. Following Boivin and Ng (2006), the emphasis is put on the role of dataset …