Hi all,

I am very new to macros and looping (in Stata). I have certain variables for which it is necessary to have non-missing values to include them in regression. I used the following code to drop those observations with missing values of the assigned variables (under essentials), but it says it is an invalid syntax. Am I doing something wrong?

Code:
local essentials resp_edu_2014 resp_edu_2016 haschild_2014 haschild_2016 eqk2_2016 inc_asp_2014 inc_asp_2016 ast_asp_2014 ast_asp_2016 edu_asp_2014 edu_asp_2016 stat_asp_2014 stat_asp_2016 ln_oil_2014 ln_oil_2016 ln_sugar_2014 ln_sugar_2016 ln_salt_2014 ln_salt_2016
foreach var in `essentials' {
    drop if missing(`var')
}
I also tried the following:

Code:
local essentials resp_edu_2014 resp_edu_2016 haschild_2014 haschild_2016 eqk2_2016 inc_asp_2014 inc_asp_2016 ast_asp_2014 ast_asp_2016 edu_asp_2014 edu_asp_2016 stat_asp_2014 stat_asp_2016 ln_oil_2014 ln_oil_2016 ln_sugar_2014 ln_sugar_2016 ln_salt_2014 ln_salt_2016
foreach var in `essentials' {
    drop if `var'==.
}
Same goes when I do set the variables as global instead of local, and use $var instead of `var'.

Thanks!