Dear Statalisters,

I have three questions regarding my dissertation.

I am investigating the impact of CSR on credit ratings of the long-term debt instruments over a period of 18 years in a single country and my dataset contains 2691 unique companies.

1. Most of the companies have issued long-term debt securities more than once a year, with irregular time gaps between them. I am trying to incorporate a one-period time lag between CSR expenses and the credit ratings of the debt instruments. I have declared the dataset as panel data, however, I am unable to incorporate any lag. Below is an example of my dataset.

dataex co_code rating_date rating year sectype_name csr_pat, c(10)
Code:
* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input long co_code int rating_date str4 rating float year str61 sectype_name double csr_pat
11 17773 "BBB"  2008 "Non-government debt"                   .
11 18192 "BBB"  2009 "Long term Loans"     .009174311926605505
11 18192 "BBB"  2009 "Non-government debt" .009174311926605505
11 18632 "BBB"  2011 "Non-government debt"  .03697996918335901
11 18632 "BBB"  2011 "Long term Loans"      .03697996918335901
11 19047 "BBB-" 2012 "Long term Loans"     .006340579710144927
11 19047 "BBB-" 2012 "Non-government debt" .006340579710144927
11 19397 "BBB-" 2013 "Long term Loans"     .006276150627615063
11 19408 "BB+"  2013 "Term loans"          .006276150627615063
11 19408 "BB+"  2013 "Term loans"          .006276150627615063
end
format %td rating_date

2. Beta is one of my control variables and the data source provides 5-year beta, with weekly observations. I am unable to merge it properly with the previous dataset.

dataex co_code cobeta_from_date cobeta_to_date beta, c(10)
Code:
* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input long co_code str10(cobeta_from_date cobeta_to_date) float beta
 11 "01-04-2006" "31-03-2011" 1.1487
 11 "01-04-2007" "31-03-2012" 1.1109
 11 "01-04-2008" "31-03-2013" 1.1367
 11 "01-04-2009" "31-03-2014"  .8999
 11 "01-04-2010" "31-03-2015"  .9902
 11 "01-04-2011" "31-03-2016"  .9802
 11 "01-04-2012" "31-03-2017"   .947
 11 "01-04-2013" "31-03-2018"   .979
289 "01-04-2001" "31-03-2006" 1.1402
289 "01-04-2002" "31-03-2007" 1.3213
end
3. I am unable to merge two more datasets with the dataset mentioned in Q1. These datasets contain annual figures (financial indicators like PAT, PBT), and auditors data.

Kindly help. Many thanks in advance.

Warm regards,

Avik