# Panel Data, Fixed Effects regression

I have a question about the fixed effects model.

I have 25 manufacturing sectors for a 12 year period (balanced panel data set) and I try to find out the effect of each sector's investment expenditure on the ratio of skilled/ unskilled workers for each sector, so my regression model is:

S/U= f(real investment expenditure) among other things. Because I'm interested in capturing the effect of investment on S/U for different sectors individually, I created dummy variables for each sector and interacted them with investment expenditures of each sector. When I run that regression with fixed effects, investment appears to be a significant factor for determining skill ratio only for 2 sectors. However, when I run the regression with fe, vce (robust), the relationship seems significant for almost all sectors.

I'm wondering how this is possible.

Thanks!

• It’s not clear to me exactly what you’re doing in the two cases you’re comparing. – The Laconic Mar 16 at 3:25

## 2 Answers

Regarding your question and the Stata FAQ quoted above, note that when you use vce(robust) in [xtreg, fe], Stata interprets this as [xtreg, fe vce(cluster)].

If you have a negative correlation in either the regressor of interest or the errors within the cluster, you can have such effect.

Please look at this Stata FAQ: https://www.stata.com/support/faqs/statistics/standard-errors-and-vce-cluster-option/ or Cameron & Miller, 2015 (http://cameron.econ.ucdavis.edu/research/Cameron_Miller_JHR_2015_February.pdf , p17)

I think your question is more suitable to model in a generalized linear mixed model with a random and slope model specification, ie.

$$\log(\frac{S}{U})\sim 1+ investment + (1+investment | sector),$$

It's a more powerful method that also take into account the random effect of the sectors