
#Stata label define code

#Stata label define how to
This guide describes how to set up a robust coding environment and write a “push-button” analysis in Stata. Unfortunately, most researchers (myself included) received little or no training in how to organize projects, write code, or document analyses. The American Economic Association’s (AEA) new data and code availability policy aims to improve this situation by imposing professional standards for coding and documentation. Research suggests that the results from many published papers cannot be reproduced from the code and data provided by the original authors. Peer review rarely evaluates code, even though code often represents the bulk of the work.

These recent developments introduce complexity and the potential for non-transparent errors. Cutting edge analyses may require thousands or millions of lines of code written in multiple languages.

Analyses employing confidential data must be performed remotely, often on a non-networked computer at a research data center. Research teams frequently include multiple people working at different universities. Researchers commonly estimate regressions with millions of observations derived from multiple datasets. Empirical research in economics has grown in importance thanks to improvements in computing power and the increased availability of rich datasets.
