Re: st: [merging US industry level data]

["Michael Blasnik" <michael.blasnik@verizon.net>]

...
It looks like you can just use a straight -merge- (called a many-to-one 
merge, but that doesn't matter) without any reshaping or creating some new 
combined variable.  You certainly do not want to append.   If both datasets 
are sorted, you can just:

merge state year using USING

Stata may issue a warning about lack of unique identification in the master 
dataset, but you can ignore that since you know that is what you 
expect/intend.

Michael Blasnik

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Cunningham" <scunning@gmail.com>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: st: [merging US industry level data]
<snip>>

> Not to butt in, but can you elaborate?  I have two datasets  currently: 
> one on health outcomes where the panel identifier is a  state variable 
> which varies over time, and another dataset (the  master dataset) where 
> the panel identifier is a state, race, age, and  sex specific cell that 
> varies over time.  The health data is from  1980-2000, while the master 
> dataset is from 1970-2000.  Originally I  was using -joinby- but it was 
> causing the master data to drop the  1970-1979 years.  So I was going back 
> to -merge-, and had planned to - reshape- the data down to a level where 
> the merge could occur between  using and master datasets.  But are you 
> saying here that -append-  might be better, where a dummy variable 
> indicating the using from the  master data?  But won't this just extend 
> the length of the master  data?  For instance, say the data is:
<snip>
> My thought was to reshape vbl1 by sex, age and race, as I was saying,  so 
> as to create a single state observation, and then merging on that  state 
> using the using data.  But are you saying that it's easier to  use append? 
> Wouldn't it just add teh data to bottom of the master data?
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