st: Questions about interaction terms using #.

[YangSP <ekastenyang@hotmail.com>]

Dear Statalister, 

I need to generate interaction terms using exporter and year in a standard gravity model. 


For example, my data is listed as follows,
year  exporter  importer  volume  GDP_exporter  GDP_importer  Distance ... ...
1995    A          B       1000       100          500             xxx
1996    A          B       2000       200          600             xxx
1997    A          B       3000       300          700             xxx
1998... 


My two questions are:

Q1: What is the difference between "i.exporter*year" and "exporter#year"? I thought they were the same thing, but they are not because of the different resluts from them. Someone who can tell me what does each of them exactly mean.

Q2: If a command, e.g. qreg, does not support "exporter#year", how can I generate the interaction terms using "gen"? 

Best wishes 

Yang 		 	   		  
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