We look at how large international datasets can improve forecasts of national activity. We use the case of New Zealand, an archetypal small open economy. We apply data-richʺ factor and shrinkage methods to tackle the problem of efficiently handling hundreds of predictor data series from many...

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, first, at ranking various forecasting methods in terms of...

This paper evaluates short-term forecasts of real GDP in the Euro area derived from the CESifo Economic Climate indicator (WES) in terms of forecast accuracy. We compare the forecast properties of the WES with those of monthly composite indicators. Considering the WES is interesting because (i)...