get_first_difference {BMisc}

get_first_difference

Description

A function that calculates the first difference in a panel data setting. If the data.frame that is passed in has nxT rows, the resulting vector will also have nxT elements with one element for each unit set to be NA.

Usage

get_first_difference(df, idname, yname, tname)

Arguments

df

the data.frame used in the function

idname

name of column that holds the unit id

yname

name of column containing the outcome (or other variable) for which to calculate its outcome in the immediate pre-treatment period

tname

name of column that holds the time period