topic Lagging variables in unbalanced panel in SAS Procedures

Lagging variables in unbalanced panel

GKati — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 13:03:03 GMT

Hello,

I have an UNBALANCED PANEL of clients (i.e. not all clients are present on every year) for four years (2010-2013). I would like to calculate the change in costs over the years. The problem is that when I lag the variable "costs", SAS lags over all client numbers (i.e. 2013 of client1 will become 2010 for client2). How do I prevent this from happening?

I can't just take out year=2010, because for some clients 2011 was the first year.

This is what I have so far:

data costchange;

set sample;

by cient;

lcost=lag(cost);

cost_score = (cost - lcost)/lcost;

where treated=1;

run;

Re: Lagging variables in unbalanced panel

RW9 — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 13:15:37 GMT

As always, some test data in the form of a datastep would help clarify what you mean. At a guess, maybe use retain'd variables and set them once per group, then when missing use the retained variable.

Re: Lagging variables in unbalanced panel

Astounding — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 13:22:38 GMT

When using LAG, it's important to make sure it executes on every observation. You're doing that ... so far so good.

The trick is to wipe out the value for observations that begin a new CLIENT. So:

data costchange;

set sample;

by cient;

lcost=lag(cost);

if first.client then lcost = . ;

cost_score = (cost - lcost)/lcost;

where treated=1;

run;

Re: Lagging variables in unbalanced panel

GKati — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 13:23:45 GMT

Perfect! Just what I was looking for.