[R] creating lagged variable in panel data

[R. Michael Weylandt]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 8:20 PM, Alok Bohara, PhD <bohara at unm.edu> wrote:
> Thanks for the input.   I wanted to avoid counting the column number.  In
> any case,  in the script -- wage.lag1 = lag(wage, -1) seems to do the trick.

The important thing is that "4" in my example below can be any
computable expression: e.g., if you want the last column

colnames(dats)[NCOL(dats)] <- ...

Alternatively, you can change the name at construction, but I couldn't
give you a hint there since you didn't tell us how you went about
adding the column.

Note something like this though:

dts <- data.frame(x = 1:5, y = letters[5:1])

dts2 <- cbind(dts, z = rnorm(5))

print(dts2)

Cheers,
Michael
>
> Alok
>
> On 8/29/2012 12:29 PM, R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weylandt at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Of course:
>>
>> colnames(dats)[4] <- "new name"
>>
>> M
>>
>> On Aug 29, 2012, at 9:34 AM, "Alok K Bohara, PhD" <bohara at unm.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> I found an example in R to create a lagged panel data set which works
>>> fine.  The only problem is that it adds the lagged variable as follows
>>>
>>> wage2.dat
>>>
>>>           year person        wage        lag(wage, -1)
>>> 1.1  1980      1 -0.75843997            NA
>>> 1.2  1981      1  0.27233048   -0.75843997
>>> 1.3  1982      1 -1.58335767    0.27233048
>>> 1.4  1983      1  0.36805926   -1.58335767
>>> 1.5  1984      1 -0.52312153    0.36805926
>>> 2.6  1980      2 -0.53559110            NA
>>> 2.7  1981      2 -0.94935350   -0.53559110
>>> 2.8  1982      2  0.10486688   -0.94935350
>>> 2.9  1983      2 -0.50266443    0.10486688
>>> 2.10 1984      2 0.14644024   -0.50266443
>>> .
>>> .
>>>
>>> Is there anyway  I could rename the last column      wag.lag1? Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Alok
>>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Alok K. Bohara, Ph.D.
> Professor
> Department of Economics
> MSC 05 3060
> 1 University of New Mexico
> Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001, USA
> Ph: 505-277-5903/5304(w)
> Fax:505-277-9445
> email: bohara at unm.edu
> http://www.unm.edu/~econ/faculty/professors.html
> Nepal Study Center: http://nepalstudycenter.unm.edu
>