This paper considers factor forecasting with national versus factor forecasting with international data. We forecast German GDP based on a large set of about 500 time series, consisting of German data as well as data from Euro-area and G7 countries. For factor estimation, we consider standard...

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...