Ricardo Ovaldia <[email protected]> posted a follow-up question and mentioned
that he is using -capture- to prevent his do-file from exiting when -clogit-
exits with an error:
> Thank you Jeff. I assumed that was the case. However,
> should the -e()- results be clear if the regression
> fails?
If the regression failed, then there is something wrong with the model fit.
As a general rule, -e()- is only guaranteed to contain meaningful information
when the model fit completes without error.
The only exception to this is when -ml- fails to converge. Even if -ml-
failed to converge, it will still post results to -e()- and report the table
of estimation results. In this case -ml- will also set -e(rc)- to 430.
While -clogit- uses -ml- to perform the model fit, the original error message
that Ricardo posted was the result of a numerical instability resulting in an
error.
> The reason I am concerned is that I wrote a program to
> do a series of -clogit- and produce a table of odds
> ratios and CI. I use -cap clogit- so that when ever
> the model failed it would not stop the run, but would
> output missing values for the OR and CI. However, e(b)
> and e(V) are not missing, and the table looks like all
> models worked.
>
> I will modify the program to capture the return code,
> but this is something that can easily "bite" even
> experienced users. I see no justification for this
> strange behavior. I assume this also happens with
> other estimators.
Whenever you -capture- the results of a command in Stata, you should also
consult the value of -c(rc)- (the modern synonym for Stata's -_rc- system
variable).
After the -capture-d command, use an -if- statement that branches off to post
results from the successfully fitted model or post a message (or missing
values) for the unsuccessfully fitted model.
Here is a pseudo-example
tempname b
local dim = ... // expected dimension of e(b)
capture clogit ...
if c(rc) == 0 {
// code for dealing with the estimation results
matrix `b' = e(b)
}
else {
// code for handling a failed model fit
matrix `b' = J(1,`dim',.)
}
--Jeff
[email protected]
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