Practical Time Series Analysis

Panel data

So far, we have seen data taken from multiple individuals but at one point in time (cross-sectional) or taken from an individual entity but over multiple points in time (time series). However, if we observe multiple entities over multiple points in time we get a panel data also known as longitudinal data. Extending our earlier example about the military expenditure, let us now consider four countries over the same period of 1960-2010. The resulting data will be a panel dataset. The figure given below illustrates the panel data in this scenario. Rows with missing values, corresponding to the period 1960 to 1987 have been dropped before plotting the data.

Figure 1.4: Example of panel data

A generic panel data regression model can ...