Forecasting the world economy is a difficult task given the complex interrelationships within and across countries …. This paper proposes a number of approaches to forecast short-term changes in selected world economic variables and aims … forecasting directly aggregate variables (direct approaches) outperform methods based on the aggregation of country …

In a globalised world economy, global factors have become increasingly important to explain trade flows at the expense … world trade is directly forecasted at the aggregate levels, relative to quot;bottom-upquot; approaches, where world trade … results from an aggregation of country-specific forecasts. Factor models in particular prove rather accurate, where the …