How to change the storage type of an hourly-based date variable

[Ioannis pragidis]

Hi everyone,

I work with hourly panel data (format %tc) which can only be stored in double format. However, when I try to run xtdidregress I get the following error:

xtdidregress (consumption) (receivedher) , group(clientid) time(date) vce(cluster clientid)

date: factor variables may not contain noninteger values
r(452);

Any thoughts on how to deal with this?

Best,

Ioannis

[Nick Cox]

A date-time variable in Stata is mathematically an integer, but as you know it's strongly recommended to hold such date-times in double storage type as those integers can be very big, often in quadrillions. (double isn't a format.)

I can't advise on why xtdidregress doesn't like those values. But it may be that dividing by 60000 and possibly using a different time origin allows a different storage type. Together with revisiting the xtset that may yield a work-around.

[Ioannis pragidis]

Thank you!