st: Testing Covariance Balance without Matching

[Guy Grossman <guygrossman1@gmail.com>]

Dear stats users,

I am using Stata 10.1 to analyze results from a lab experiment in
which subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment
conditions (T1, T2, T3). I collected some socio-demographic
information on the participants and I wish to test whether covariates
are balanced across treatment groups (some variable are categorical,
some continuous).

I have previously used pscore and psmatch2 packages (user-written) and
found them quite useful. However, it seems that both these
user-written programs allow to test for balance only after matching.
In this study I am not using matching in my analysis.

My questions are:

1. Does Stata have a command or user-written package to test for
covariate balance by treatment status without first running a Matching
algorithm? I am interested especially in randomization inference (i.e.
permutation-based) balance tests (as Sekhon's Match package in R)

2. If so - is there an efficiently way to export this covariates'
balance test to Latex/ breamer?

3. This is slightly more general question - what covariate balance
test is considered today "best practice"? in poli-sci (my discipline)
researchers usually only present t-test on difference of means, but
this seems unsatisfactory.

Your comments and suggestions would be highly appreciated,
Guy
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