Dear Statalist members,
I found answers to many of my Stata- or statistics-related questions before on this forum, but this specific question does not seem to have come up yet. So I hope someone can help me today, even though the question is more on regression analysis that on a problem with Stata!
From a reviewer on a paper of mine, I recieved a comment that I just do not understand.

The comment revolves around a random effects panel regression using -xtlogit.
I have a continuous dependent variable and several time-invariant independent variables for health centers like staff, service volume etc. The health centers I study are located in 19 different regions (which has an influence on my outcome), so I also control for regional variation by including each region as an independent dummy variable. I use similar word in the manuscript to describe this.

Code:
xtlogit depvar staff service_volume distance insurance_rate i.region, re vce(cluster id)
Comment by the reviewer:
"Why is region treated as a fixed factor? It has 19 categories and should therefore be treated as a random factor."

This is what I don't understand. By including region as a dummy variable, I don't make it a "fixed factor" (whatever that is), do I? Or is there anything I am missing?
Would be thankful for any insights on this since I am struggeling with replying to the comment, as is my mor eexperienced colleague.

Best regards,
Leon