Variable transormation and change in coefficients

[lal mohan kumar]

Dear Stata members
Let us say that my dependent variable is Net credit, derived as a difference between credit granted less credit availed scaled by total assets((Credit granted-credit availed)/Total assets)). My independent variable of interest is uncertainty proxied by rolling standard deviation of yearly GDP. I ran the panel regressions with some controls. My results indicate that
1)There exists a positive relationship between(significant too) Net credit and Uncertainty.
However, when I redo the panel regressions with

1. Credit granted scaled by total assets as my dependent variable and uncertainty as my independent variable; coefficient is insignificant and +ve
2. Credit availed scaled by total assets as my dependent variable and uncertainty as my independent variable; coefficient is significant and -ve.

I may be wrong but think this can happen because in the first case(net credit as dependent variable), it is a relationship between net credit and rolling std dev of GDP alone, hence the nature of the relationship will be a particular one(also with one residual). However, when I run the regression independently with credit granted and credit availed separately, all the covariates vary separately in these regressions hence a difference can happen. Can someone help me here to find a better explanation(theoretically and econometrically

[lal mohan kumar]

https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...ts#post1571066
For the above post, unfortunately,I couldn't invoke any response. Since my question was related to a theoretical level, I didn't post any codes. Please let me know if I need to add more to make my question more clear. Sincere apology for misspelling the word transformation in the heading. I couldn't edit by the time I saw it.

[Phil Bromiley]

When you run a difference variable as the dependent variable, you are simply running a different model than when you run the two components separately. While there have been discussions of the issues of difference variables, the simple answer is that the difference is different than the two components.

That is, what drives sales and what drives total expenses may be different than what drives the difference between sales and expenses – net income. For example, firm size almost automatically associates strongly with sales and with total expenses, but doesn't necessarily associate much with net income.

[lal mohan kumar]

Thanks Phil. Yes I think I understood