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help for ^torats^                    (Statalist distribution, 12 Dec 2006)
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Write program and data for use in RATS econometrics package
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    ^torats^ [varlist] [^if^ exp] [^in^ range] ,^File^(string) [^noCASE^ ^Replace^]


Description
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^torats^ facilitates the transfer of data to the RATS package via ASCII text
files (that is, it does not create a RATS binary database, but then neither 
does Stat/Transfer). If executed in simplest form, ^torats,file(filename)^,
it creates two files: ^filename.rat^, containing a shell RATS program that
will read the data, and ^filename.raw^, the data themselves. If files with
those names already exist, the ^replace^ option must be used. It is left to
the user to write the appropriate timeseries calendar statements, if the data
are indeed in timeseries format, or modify the allocate statement to indicate
that these are panel data, etc.

Since RATS does not handle string variables, only numeric variables are 
transferred. The numeric values of variables which appear in Stata as their
value labels (e.g. foreign in the auto.dta dataset) are transferred, since
the value labels could not be used in RATS. Unless the ^nocase^ option is
utilized, casewise deletion is performed 
so that only observations with complete data are transferred to the output
file.

If no ^varlist^ is given, all variables are transferred to the output files.
An explicit ^varlist^ overrides this behavior.

Although the .rat file is specific to RATS (www.estima.com), its format is
very similar to that used by TSP, eViews, or other commonly used econometrics
packages.


Example
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	. ^use http://fmwww.bc.edu/ec-p/data/greene2000/tbl15-1.dta,clear^

	. ^reshape wide i f c,i(year) j(firm)^
	
	. ^torats,file(grunfeld)^
	
	. ^torats i1 i2 i3 i4 i5 if year>1940, file(grunfeld2)^
	
	. ^webuse auto^
	
	. ^torats mpg rep78 weight length, file(autodat) nocase replace^

 
Authors
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Christopher F Baum, Boston College, USA
baum@@bc.edu

Nicholas J. Cox, Durham University, UK
N.J.Cox@@durham.ac.uk

Also see
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On-line:  help for @outfile@; @outdat@ (if installed)
