Yes, this is exactly what I wanted to do. ( I.e. you want the direction of the change to determine sign of pct.) Thanks for your help. rfortin
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I have an economic data series of positive and negative numbers and i am having difficulty computing the percentage change. I compute percentage change as: [(current - prior)/prior]*100 (I am using the lag function for prior). This works fine if the numbers are positive but errors occur in some cases with 2 negative numbers or a positive and a negative number. For example: prior 4 current 2 -50% OK prior 2 current 4 100% OK prior -4 current -2 - 50% error prior -2 current -4 100% error prior 4 current -2 -150% OK prior -4 current 2 -150% error prior 2 current -4 -300% OK prior -2 current 4 -300% error
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Thanks for your help. I have copied the code that worked below. rfortin format newdatadate mmddyy6.; newdatadate = datepart(datadate); d = day(newdatadate); m = month(newdatadate); y = year(newdatadate); sasdate = mdy(m,d,y);
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Thanks everyone for all your suggestions. With your help, I finally figured this out and have copied the code in the attached word file. rfortin
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