Dear Statalist

I saw many researchers decomposing the variables into positive and negative values. For instance, if we are examining the impact of growth in sales on trade credit, before the decomposing, the results show that the coefficient of the growth is negative, so to have additional information about the effect of the variable, they decompose the growth to positive growth and negative growth, so the former takes positive values of sales growth, and 0 otherwise, and the latter takes negative values, and 0 otherwise, and this can be done by the following code:

generate growth_positive =gorwth*(growth>0)
generate growth_negative= -growth*(growth<0)

So, my question why they decompose it, is it because the growth coefficient before the decomposition was negative, if yes, shall we decompose the growth if we get a positive coefficient?

Devoting some of your valuable time to answering my question is highly appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Many thanks in advance.