So, if I understand you correctly, with each additional year of data
you added both another record for each firm and another variable
(instead of just doing one or the other)? If so, how about something
like (I am using pseudo code here)
If not missing sales1990 then
Year = 1990
Sales = sales1990
Repeat for each year in your data. You will then have a data set that
has firm, year and sales (along with a lot of old variables you no
longer want) and you will just need to xtset it.
Sent from my iPad
On Feb 27, 2013, at 4:12 AM, James Bernard <jamesstatalist@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear list members,
>
> I was trying to reshape my dataset from wide to long, and realized
> that the the identifier of each case has to be unique. The problem is
> actually with the shape of my data-set. I cannot use -duplicates drop-
> to do teh job due to the nature of my dataset which looks like this:
>
>
> Firm sales_1990 sales_1991 sales_1992
> -------------- -------------------- ------------------
> -----------------------
> ABC 10 missing missing
> ABC missing 23 missing
> ABC missing missing 15
> CDF
> .
> .
> .
> GFP
>
>
> it is panel data so the same thing goes for CDF and GFP
>
> As you can see, I cannot make the cases unique.
>
> Is there any way out of this quagmire?
>
> I was thinking about finding a command that can make the sales in each
> year being repeated for each firm. Then I could use _duplicates drop-
> command.
>
> I appreciate your help!
>
> Thanks,
> James
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