st: Help How to Summarize Data

["Scott Hill" <scott.hill.stata@gmail.com>]

  I would like to ask for your help. I have a dataset which has the
following format.

  Firm_Name    Stage_Number    Stage_Number_of_Investors    Stage_Date
  A                          1                             1
                                     1  Oct  96
  A                          2                              2
                                      1  Apr  97
  A                          2                              2
                                      1  Apr  97
  B                          1                              2
                                     28 Mar 01
  B                          1                              2
                                     28 Mar 01
  C                          1                             1
                                       1 Feb 01
  C                          2                             1
                                       1 Feb 01
  C                          3                             1
                                       1 Feb 01
  D                          1                             3
                                     15 May 95
  D                          2                             3
                                     15 May 95

In this example, there are 4 firms, A, B, C, and D. These are firms
which receive
financing from investors in various stages and dates. Firms A, B, and D received
financing from several investors, while firm C received financing only from 1
investor.


So firm A received financing in the 1st stage (column Stage_number) from 1
investor (column Stage_number_of Investors) on  1 Oct 96 (column Stage_date). In
the 2nd stage, firm A received financing from 2 investors on 1 Apr 97.

I would like to summarize the number of firms which received financing from
several investors like this:

  In terms of stages:

  Stage_Number            No. of Firms Which Received Financing From
Several Investors

  1                                         2   (referring to firms B and D)
  2                                         1    (referring to firm A)
                                             Total: 3 firms

  In terms of years:

  Year(s)                          No. of Firms Receiving Financing
> From Several Investors
0.5                                        1 (referring to firm A - 1
Oct 96 to a Apr 97)
1                                           2 (referring to firms B
and D)
                                             Total: 3 firms

I tried to find ways to summarize this kind of information in Stata, but was
unsuccessful. Could somebody help me?

Thanks,

Scott
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