Hello

I have firm-pair-quarter panel data where firm-pairs are not repeated or duplicated (i.e., if pair A-B-2010Q1 is in the sample, pair B-A 2021Q1 will not be in the sample).

I have the identifying information for each observation in a separate column, call it Firm I and Firm J.

I want to use the absorb() function to identify all of the pairs where firm XYZ is either in the Firm I column OR the Firm J column.

As best I can tell, the input into the absorb() function relies only on a single categorical variable. Is there some way for me to do this in stata without having to create unique indicators for each firm? I have over 20 million observations so I don't know if my stata would be able to handle me making the indicators by themselves.

Thanks for any thoughts in advance!