Re: st: Re: slow

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.edu>]

At 05:28 PM 2/16/2006, Michael Blasnik wrote:
> I think you are stuck with my original option 3 -- get a faster 
> computer. I'm not that familiar with xtabond2, but it's probably a 
> good guess given what little I do know that they require a lot of 
> calculations.  One other possibility- if you are allocating more 
> memory than is physically available you could speed things up quite 
> a bit by adding RAM.  If the hard drive is being used a lot during 
> the do file, then that may be the problem.
The program does suggest one other possibility if you aren't doing it 
already: use Stata 9.  The docs say "xtabond2 is written to take 
advantage of the Mata programming language first included in Stata 
9.0.  It works in Stata 7 and 8, but runs much faster in Stata 9 or later."

Also, some programs that are having convergence problems will run 
better if you use the "difficult" option.  I don't know if xtabond2 
is one of them or not.

As a sidelight, there is one other little thing in the docs I like:

"Citation
    xtabond2 is not an official Stata command. It is a free 
contribution to the research community, like a paper. Please cite it 
as such: Roodman, D. 2005.  xtabond2: Stata module to extend xtabond 
dynamic panel data estimator. Center for Global Development, 
Washington.         http://econpapers.repec.org/software/bocbocode/s435901.htm";

I think that is a good idea, at least for a major estimation program 
like xtabond2.  A lot of authors just seem to assume that some 
nameless Stata programmer received enormous amounts of money for this 
program they are running.




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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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