st: comparing variables across time

[Navid Asgari <navid@nus.edu.sg>]

Hi all,

I have a data-set which looks like this:


      Year   P |
     |----------|
  1. | 1995   A |
  2. | 1995   B |
  3. | 1995   A |
  4. | 1995   C |
  5. | 1995   D |
     |----------|
  6. | 1995   A |
  7. | 1995   E |
  8. | 1995   A |
  9. | 1996   B |
 10. | 1996   A |
     |----------|
 11. | 1996   A |
 12. | 1996   M |
 13. | 1996   A |
 14. | 1996   H |
 15. | 1996   A |
     |----------|
 16. | 1996   C

I use the following to count number of new values under variable "P" that exists in the year 1996, but not 1995:

gen id = _n
> reshape long P , i(id)
> bysort P (Year id) : gen seq = _n

Count if Year==1996 & seq==1

Now I want to do the same thing for more than 2 successive years (e.g. 1993,1994,1995,1996). So, values of variable "P" in every year will be compared with the value of its previous year (1994 to 1993, then 1995 to 1994, and so forth....


The complexity of this lies in the fact that this comparison has to be done by each unique value of another variable and the starting year and ending year varies in each group. In fact this is how the structure of the real data looks like:


     | Year   P    company |
     |---------------------|
  1. | 1995   A   Company1 |
  2. | 1995   B   Company1 |
  3. | 1995   A   Company1 |
  4. | 1995   C   Company1 |
  5. | 1995   D   Company1 |
     |---------------------|
  6. | 1995   A   Company1 |
  7. | 1995   E   Company1 |
  8. | 1995   A   Company1 |
  9. | 1996   B   Company1 |
 10. | 1996   A   Company1 |
     |---------------------|
 11. | 1996   A   Company1 |
 12. | 1996   M   Company1 |
 13. | 1996   A   Company1 |
 14. | 1996   H   Company1 |
 15. | 1996   A   Company1 |
     |---------------------|
 16. | 1996   C   Company1 |
 17. | 1993   G   Company2 |
 18. | 1993   G   Company2 |
 19. | 1993   M   Company2 |
 20. | 1993   K   Company2 |
     |---------------------|
 21. | 1993   A   Company2 |
 22. | 1993   B   Company2 |
 23. | 1994   C   Company2 |
 24. | 1994   M   Company2 |
 25. | 1994   K   Company2 |
     |---------------------|
 26. | 1994   L   Company2 |
     +---------------------+

So for every group under variable company the code will count number of new values of variable "P" in every year that did not exist a year before...

Thanks in advance,
Navid

NUS Business School




*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/