I am currently doing a research thesis titled "The Effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) on Indonesia's Trade". I have a panel data that consist of indonesia and its partner trade data from 1980 to 2011. In short, I have to create dummy variables of FTA that signed by Indonesia and its partner country.
I am new learner in STATA. My file is in excel file. I already importing it to STATA. I already construct the dummy variables on excel. Actually, there are 14 dummy variable : AANZFTA, AIFTA, AJFTA, AKFTA, AFTA, JIFTA, ACFTA, NAFTA, SAFTA, PAFTA, KUSFTA, SUSFTA, EUOCT, TPSEP. But each FTA has a branch of 3 dummy variables. For example, AANZFTA has AANZFTA1, AANZFTA21, and AANZFTA22. The meaning for that variables are :
[INDENT][/INDENT]FTA1jt : country j must be a member of that FTA at time t. Note that if at time t, that FTA is not yet signed, FTA1it would be zero for country j at time t.
[INDENT][/INDENT]FTA21jt : Country j must not be a member of that FTA at time t and must not be a member of any other FTA.
[INDENT][/INDENT]FTA22jt : Country j must not be a member of that FTA at time t and must be a member of at least one of Indonesia other FTAs.
How do i can make stata read my dummy variable that i already construct on excel as dummy variables on stata? Or, if it is not possible, how do i construct/generate all of those dummy variables on stata?
I really need your help. It is such a big relief for me. Thank you very much.
Dear Anandita,
here are some guide notes on how to create dummy variables at STATA
http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/faq/dummy.htm
Generally you can find a lot of information and examples through that site!
I guess that stata will automatically identify the variables as binary variables (0 and 1 values) - dummy variables and therefore you will not need to do something extra after importing the data into stata.
In any case you can follow the guidelines and create them from scratch!
I hope that this will help!
Good luck
So long as you have the variables that you used in creating the dummy variables, I consider it much more appealing to import your entire dataset into STATA and generate the dummy variables there. In addition to the guidelines pointed out by Yiorgos above, you might want to look at http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data-management/creating-dummy-variables/. However, Yiorgos is right that once you have created the dummies in excel, it should not be have STATA recognise them as such. After importing you simply may need to adjust your variable names and labels.
That being said, yous hould be aware of several potential problems (which I suspect you might have encountered) while importing from a spreadsheet into STATA:
1. Sometimes, if you have more than one line of headers, then STATA may not recognise them all and invariably it will render the imported data as string rather than numeric. In this case, the 'destring' command comes in handy.
2. Sometimes, depending on how your data is pre-formatted in the spreadsheet, STATA might just be too confused when importin and thus render them according to its best judgement which may not be satisfactory for you. To forestall this, ensure that all numbers are stored as numbers and text as text.
Best wishes.
First of all, thank you very much for answering my question, Mr.Yiorgos and Mr.Abiodun. Well, I have constructed my datasheet on excel file. It consist of all variables that needed on my research, include dummy variable. I had constructed my dummy variable manually in excel. That file has successfully imported to STATA. I also have declare it to be panel data. I already labeling my variables and all variables stored as I need. I also handled the missing value problems. One thing that makes me confused is....Does STATA automatically read my dummy variables (in excel files) as dummy variables in STATA? If that so, can I do panel regression with that dummy variables?
Yes it does. And, as long as they fit into your analyses, yes you may use them.
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