Re: st: Preventing 'spreading' on merging files

[Ernest Berkhout <ernestb@seo.fee.uva.nl>]

At 12:28 31/03/2004, you wrote:
> I have a data set with around 90,000 observations and I am merging it with
> another dataset with around 3 million observations.  However, when I merge the
> two, the number of '3s' in the _merge variable exceeds the 90,000 in the 
> master
> file by a few thousand, indicating that there is more than one observation in
> the using file for some of the observations in the working file.
>
> Does anyone know if it is possible to prevent Stata from picking up the
> additional observations from the using file (i.e., constraining the 
> observations
> merged to the 90,000 in the working file)?
Sounds like your key-variable is not unique in the using dataset, so some 
records in your master set match with more than one record in the using 
set, and therefor get duplicated.
Maybe you might want to take a look at mmerge.ado, which adresses these 
issues more directly then the built-in merge command.


Ernest Berkhout
SEO Amsterdam Economics
University of Amsterdam

Room 3.08
Roetersstraat 29
1018 WB Amsterdam
The Netherlands

tel.:+ 31 20 525 1657
fax:+ 31 20 525 1686
http://www.seo.nl
===========================
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