st: Adding missing observations explicitly to a data file

["Jonas Dovern" <J.Dovern@student.unimaas.nl>]

Dear all,

I have the following problem: I have several text-files consisting of yearly 
data for different countries. However, data for some of the years are 
missing (different years for different countries) without being explicitly 
noted in the file by using NaN or some similar data entry. E.g. the data set 
looks like

year    country    var1
1960    aaa         x1
1961    aaa        x2
1964   aaa         x3
1965   aaa          x4

What I want to have is a data set like

year    country    var1
1960    aaa         x1
1961    aaa        x2
1962     .             .
1963     .             .
1964   aaa         x3
1965   aaa          x4
1966     .             .
1967     .             .
1968     .             .
1969     .             .

I tried creating a dataset containing the variable date only for the entire 
sample and using merge to add the original data set. Unfortunately, I 
couldn't figure out the right way to yield the desired outcome.
I would appreciate any helpful suggestions. Thanks.

Jonas

_________________________________
Jonas Dovern
D�sternbrooker Weg 148
24105 Kiel
Phone: +49-(0)431-1608746
Mobile: +49-(0)176-21532822
J.Dovern@student.unimaas.nl
Dovern@asp.ifw-kiel.de
_________________________________ 
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