create simultaneous pairs for multiple variables

[Giacomo DP]

I am trying to create dyads in my Stata data set for multiple variables, at the same time. Here is what I have:

Year id Freedom
2005 1 6.8
2006 1 7.0
.
.
2016 1 5.5
2005 2 3.8
2006 2 4.2
.
.
2016 2 5.4

I would like to turn it into this

Year id_1 id_2 Freedom_1 Freedom_2
2005 1 2 6.8 3.8
2006 1 2 7.0 4.2
.
.
2016 2 1 5.4 5.5

where id is the number of US states and goes from 1 to 50

[Ken Chui]

clear
input Year id Freedom
2005 1 6.8
2006 1 7.0
2016 1 5.5
2005 2 3.8
2006 2 4.2
2016 2 5.4
end

rename Freedom Freedom_

reshape wide Freedom_, i(Year) j(id)

list

Results:

     +----------------------------+
     | Year   Freedo~1   Freedo~2 |
     |----------------------------|
  1. | 2005        6.8        3.8 |
  2. | 2006          7        4.2 |
  3. | 2016        5.5        5.4 |
     +----------------------------+

Having said the above, I think it's generally a bad idea to change long form into wide form. It's a lot easier to use "if" or a "foreach" loop to manage a long data than to juggle 50 variables separately.