remove "inflation" without inflation data?

[jerome falken]

say I have a signal, which includes some form of inflationary price, but I don't know the inflation rate other than it's "quite likely linear" (by observation only), is there a better way to remove this inflation than the script below:

clear
set obs 1000
gen signal=_n*0.01+runiform()
gen date=_n+14610
format %td date
tsset date
regress signal date
gen signalwithoutinflation=signal-(date*_b[date])+_b[_cons]
tsline signalwithoutinflation

Let me know if this makes sense.

[William Lisowski]

It seems to me you just want to

predict signalwithoutinflation, residual

or perhaps either

predict signalwithoutinflation, residual
replace signalwithoutinflation = signalwithoutinflation+_b[date]*date[1]

to deflate everything back to the equivalent of the first date, or

predict signalwithoutinflation, residual
​​​​​​​replace signalwithoutinflation = signalwithoutinflation+_b[date]*date[_N]

to inflate everything forward to the equivalent of the last date.

[jerome falken]

yeah that makes sense.