Hi,

I'm running a simple hedonic regression using a property dataset, where:

regress ln_price ln_bedrooms ln_bathrooms b1.Locality_clean i.datum if listing_observed == 1
The coefficients all follow the expected signs, and I'm quite happy with the results. However, I have a small issue with the benchmark category of the Locality_clean variable. I chose to go with b1.Locality_clean, and the output from the regression is saying:

Locality_clean |
. | 0 (empty)
L1 | .0805942 .0605585 1.33 0.183 -.0381022 .1992907
L2 | -.1682424 .1626097 -1.03 0.301 -.4869621 .1504773
L3 | -.4344224 .4724776 -0.92 0.358 -1.360492 .4916471

Which is strange, given Locality_clean has no . values. Locality is a "long" variable, generated after encoding a string variable named "Locality". If I go with b2.Locality_clean, the "." line disappears (and L1 becomes the base category and obviously disappears too).

Has anyone ever encountered this issue? It's bugging me a bit...I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong, but I do not know what!

Thanks a lot!

Ben.