Panel data period effect

[Lynn Lim]

Hey,

I am currently doing a research on the impact of great recession on the suicide rate across states in US.
My panel data is on 51 states and years from 2000-2010.
I am trying to compute the effect of unemployment of 2007-2009 onto suicide rate but I can't seem to find a proper formula for the stata command.
I will be really grateful if someone could assist me with this.

Cheers !

[Alfonso Sánchez-Peñalver]

This is very difficult to address without knowing exactly how you're carrying out your analysis, i.e. what type of estimation you are doing. Do you expect unemployment during 2007-2009 to have any different effect on suicide rate than during the other years? If so I would create a variable that has the unemployment for 2007-2009 and zeros for all other years, and include both the unemployment and the unemployment0709 variables in my regression. The coefficient on the latter measures how much more, or less if negative, did unemployment affect the mean suicide rate during those years, and the sum of both coefficients is the total effect of unemployment on suicide rate for those years.

[Lynn Lim]

Hey Alfonso, thank you so much for the reply.

I am currently carrying out a fixed effect estimation.
And yes, I do expect the unemployment during 2007 - 2009 to have a different effect on the suicide rate.

Thank you so much for your advice !

Cheers !