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Re: st: Again-Unique Case ID in Large Panel


From   "Michael S. Hanson" <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: Again-Unique Case ID in Large Panel
Date   Wed, 4 Aug 2004 14:22:06 -0400

On Aug 4, 2004, at 1:48 PM, Nick Cox wrote:

I got it, I think. You need to play
around with the -width()- option in
-xtdes-. I surmise that the default
is not big enough for your data.
My first thought was: "What width option? There is no "width" option listed for -xtdes- in the [XT] manual." But I see it is listed in the on-line help -- and sure enough, in my panel of i=50 and t=140, if I either drop enough observations so that t=100 or I add ", width(200)" to the -xtdes- command, I now -- correctly -- am told

(i*t uniquely identifies each observation)

whereas before I was told otherwise. Good catch, Nick!

Which brings me to the question: why even bother setting a default width, let alone setting it so low? This arguably isn't very intuitive (look at the time wasted by the OP), and with "wide" panels of data becoming ever more common as time goes on (pun intended), perhaps this limit could be raised (or dropped altogether) the next time an update to the ado files is made?

-- Mike

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