Using fe with panel data

[Jane McGrath]

How often do I need to include ", fe" after my regressions when I am using panel data? For example I have a list of 100 companies with 10 years of data for each company, my dependent variable is staying the same with each regression, however my independent variables are changing. Do I need to put fe after each regression?

[Clyde Schechter]

Yes.

[Maxence Morlet]

Do not forget

i.time

in the list of regressors for time fixed-effects as well

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Jane:
if you do not specify -fe-, Stata reads your code as you were willing to go -re-, as you can see from the following, deliberately poor, toy-example:

. use "https://www.stata-press.com/data/r17/nlswork.dta"
(National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women, 14-24 years old in 1968)

. xtreg ln_wage c.age

Random-effects GLS regression                   Number of obs     =     28,510
Group variable: idcode                          Number of groups  =      4,710

R-squared:                                      Obs per group:
     Within  = 0.1026                                         min =          1
     Between = 0.0877                                         avg =        6.1
     Overall = 0.0774                                         max =         15

                                                Wald chi2(1)      =    3140.35
corr(u_i, X) = 0 (assumed)                      Prob > chi2       =     0.0000

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     ln_wage | Coefficient  Std. err.      z    P>|z|     [95% conf. interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
         age |   .0185667   .0003313    56.04   0.000     .0179174    .0192161
       _cons |   1.120439   .0112038   100.01   0.000      1.09848    1.142398
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
     sigma_u |  .36972456
     sigma_e |  .30349389
         rho |  .59743613   (fraction of variance due to u_i)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. xtreg ln_wage c.age, re

Random-effects GLS regression                   Number of obs     =     28,510
Group variable: idcode                          Number of groups  =      4,710

R-squared:                                      Obs per group:
     Within  = 0.1026                                         min =          1
     Between = 0.0877                                         avg =        6.1
     Overall = 0.0774                                         max =         15

                                                Wald chi2(1)      =    3140.35
corr(u_i, X) = 0 (assumed)                      Prob > chi2       =     0.0000

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     ln_wage | Coefficient  Std. err.      z    P>|z|     [95% conf. interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
         age |   .0185667   .0003313    56.04   0.000     .0179174    .0192161
       _cons |   1.120439   .0112038   100.01   0.000      1.09848    1.142398
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
     sigma_u |  .36972456
     sigma_e |  .30349389
         rho |  .59743613   (fraction of variance due to u_i)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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