This paper summarizes recent empirical studies contributing towards the OECD Secretariat INTERLINK world macroeconomic model. For a number of topics, it reviews work which is described in more detail in recent Economics and Statistics Department Working Papers. It also covers a number of areas where recent changes have been relatively less substantial in terms of changes in model structure, but nonetheless influential in the evolution of model properties. A final section reviews current Secretariat macroeconometric modelling work which is yet to be implemented in the model and also discusses possible future developments. A separate companion paper, ESD Working Paper No. 47, analyses the single- and multi-country simulation properties of a recent version of the model, one which includes most of the research reported here ...