st: Merge results in overwritten values unexpectedly

[Matthew Watt <matthew.watt@msci.com>]

Hi,
I've run into a problem that I can't resolve and wanted to ask if others had the same problem (or if I've simply made a mistake).

I have two datasets that I am trying to merge.

Dataset 1:  Company information, with foreign exchange ("fx") rates that update quarterly, per month (variable name:  "quarterly_eur_rate").  Ie:  The fx rate for Jan 31 is the same as Feb 28 and Mar 31 (forward-filled).

Dataset 2:  Euro fx rates that update per month (variable name:  "EUR_RATE")

Dates are forced to be the end of month in both datasets.

I'm using the following command with my company information dataset loaded:


merge m:1 obsDate curcd using fxRates.dta, keep(match)


Where curcd is the name of the currency (ie:  "EUR", "JPY", "USD", ...)

I expected, and Stata returned, an additional column, EUR_RATE, with monthly observations.  What I didn't expect was that the quarterly fx rate would be changed to the monthly value (the variables have different names).  This happens regardless of the name I assign to my quarterly fx rate (ie:  "temp"), and if I create a copy of the quarterly fx rate, it too is overwritten.

What I need:  The original quarterly fx rates and the merged monthly fx rates.  Given these two things, I can compute the currency-adjusted values of the other variables in my dataset.

Anyone know why Stata is overwriting data?  The fx rates that are updated quarterly will, for about 1/3 of the observations, be the same as those updated monthly--could this cause Stata to burp?

Thanks for any comments,
Matt Watt
Research Group
MSCI Inc


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