st: conditional merging

["Ben Hoen" <bhoen@lbl.gov>]

I have two files sales.dta and condition.dta.  sales.dta has two variables
(home_id saleyear), and condition.dta has three variables (home_id
inspection_year condition).  The variable inspection_year can take the vales
of 2000-2011 for any home but for many homes only some years are present (in
many years the home was not inspected. Therefore a sample of the data might
look like:

home_id	inspection_year	condition
50121		2002			4
50121		2006			4
50121		2011			3
50681		2004			2
50681		2010			3
51040		2006			2
51040		2010			2
51040		2011			3

I would like to populate the sales.dta file with the condition of the parcel
in the inspection_year that is the closest to, but not following the
sale_year.  

So, for example, the following dataset would result

home_id	sale_year	condition
50121		2007		4
50121		2011		3
50681		2008		2
51040		2003		.
51040		2010		3

I know I am not the first person to have this problem, but could not find
threads on this.  Maybe I am using the wrong search terms.  Any help would
be greatly appreciated.  

(As I wrote this I realized one not as elegant work-around would be to
fill-in missing data for each missing year in the condition.dta file,
potentially using the user-written "carryforward" or even imputing the data
using, e.g., mi impute, and then matching home_id sale_year to home_id
inspection_year.)

Thanks, in advance!

Ben Hoen
Principal Research Associate
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Office: 845-758-1896
Cell: 718-812-7589
bhoen@lbl.gov
http://emp.lbl.gov/staff/ben-hoen

Visit our publications at: 
http://emp.lbl.gov/publications





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