Re: st: Reshape issue

[Richard Williams <richardwilliams.ndu@gmail.com>]

So, if I understand you correctly, with each additional year of data
you added both another record for each firm and another variable
(instead of just doing one or the other)? If so, how about something
like (I am using pseudo code here)

If not missing sales1990 then
   Year = 1990
    Sales = sales1990

Repeat for each year in your data. You will then have a data set that
has firm, year and sales (along with a lot of old variables you no
longer want) and you will just need to xtset it.

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 27, 2013, at 4:12 AM, James Bernard <jamesstatalist@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear list members,
>
> I was trying to reshape my dataset from wide to long, and realized
> that the the identifier of each case has to be unique. The problem is
> actually with the shape of my data-set. I cannot use -duplicates drop-
> to do teh job due to the nature of my dataset which looks like this:
>
>
>   Firm          sales_1990        sales_1991        sales_1992
> --------------    --------------------     ------------------
> -----------------------
> ABC                10                      missing              missing
> ABC                 missing              23                     missing
> ABC                  missing            missing                15
> CDF
> .
> .
> .
> GFP
>
>
> it is panel data so the same thing goes for CDF and GFP
>
> As you can see, I cannot make the cases unique.
>
> Is there any way out of this quagmire?
>
> I was thinking about finding a command that can make the sales in each
> year being repeated for each firm. Then I could use _duplicates drop-
> command.
>
> I appreciate your help!
>
> Thanks,
> James
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