[Nick Cox]

We can't see what your global macros contain, but you are correct if you are assuming that a numeric panel identifier and a numeric time variable should be sufficient for xtset, so long as each identifier-time combination occurs at most once.

[Sergiy Radyakin]

. clear

. input str32 Bankname

                             Bankname
  1. "ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH"
  2. "ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH"
  3. "ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH"
  4. "ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH"
  5. end

.
. list

     +----------------------------------+
     |                         Bankname |
     |----------------------------------|
  1. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH |
  2. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH |
  3. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH |
  4. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH |
     +----------------------------------+

.
. encode Bankname, generate(bankid)

. list, nolabel

     +-------------------------------------------+
     |                         Bankname   bankid |
     |-------------------------------------------|
  1. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH        1 |
  2. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH        1 |
  3. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH        1 |
  4. | ABN AMRO Commercial Finance GMBH        1 |
     +-------------------------------------------+

[Nigar Abduva]

Thank you very much. I had confusion about all these things. Now everything becomes very clear