analyst following

[mei]

I have file analyst.main that list  down the recommendations given by financial analyst during each year, thus there would be several recommendation (var=numrec) thru out the whole year given by date variable statpers. However I only need to select the recommendation that is given towards the end of the financial year. The enddate of the financial year is given by variable enddate, or we should select the final observation for each financial year.

for example for gvkey 001004 (first company), the fyear is 2000, thus the observation to be selected should be the 5th observation, as that is the last one in fy2000. The numrec=6.

So how do i output one dataset with each company with just one observation for each fyear?

Thanks, with data attached.

[Keith · Accepted solution]

Looking at the data, you're right in thinking that you just need to output the last observation per gvkey and enddate group.

data want;

set analyst.main;

by gvkey enddate;

if last.enddate;

run;