Order data in descending order

[Alrac Tom]

Dear all,

I use the TNIC data from Hoberg&Phillips and want to sort the scores pro competitor_rank1 in descending order in order to keep only the top 5 competitors for each gvkey1. I am not experienced with STATA and tried to do it using the following code, but the score is still in descending order:

clear
cd "C:\Users\etc"
use tnic3
sort gvkey1 score
gen competitor_rank = _n
sort competitor_rank gvkey1
egen competitor_rank1 = group(gvkey1)
bysort competitor_rank1 (score): gen descending_order = _n
sort competitor_rank1 -descending_order

alternative:
use tnic3
sort gvkey1 score
gen competitor_rank= _n
sort competitor_rank gvkey1
egen competitor_rank1=group(gvkey1)
sort -score competitor_rank1

(here the error is "- invalid name" even if the column is names "score")


Any help, however small would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

[Nick Cox]

help gsort

See also my paper on the largest 5 in the Stata Journal.

[Nick Cox]

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf...6867X221106436 is the paper concerned.

[Alrac Tom]

Thank you so much!!! I just started to use STATA and wasted so much time trying to arrange the data without result, you really saved me! Thank you very much!