st: RE: Analyzing time series data on prices by districts & markets

[Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

The list's guidelines preclude attachments but certainly do not preclude ASCII text within a posting showing part of your data. 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Partho Sarkar

I am quite new to Stata (and this list), and trying hard to quickly
pick up the skills while on the job.  Would really appreciate some
help with this task, and please excuse if this seems too elementary!

Problem:

I have a large dataset which gives prices of a commodity at each date
for different markets across the country.  The markets are classified
by State, District & Market (names).  (The commodity is only traded in
some markets, in some districts, and some states).   I need to get an
idea of the periods/dates for which the data are "sparse", i.e., there
are too few of the Markets reporting a price.

So I need,

1.	For each date, the total number of markets (over all states and
districts) for which a price is reported, and
2.	The maximum number of markets for which a price is reported for any
date in the dataset

In addition, to do a geographical analysis, I would like to record,
for each date

1.	The number of reporting markets in each district versus the total
no. of markets in that district,
2.	The number of districts in each state for which prices are
reported, versus the total no. of districts in that state
3.	Similarly, the number of states for which prices are reported,
versus the total no. of state s where a price is ever reported

I hope this is clear, as I think the List rules prevent me from
including a preview/sample of my data.

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