Testing and estimating structural breaks in time series and panel data in Stata

Jan Ditzen et al.

Stata Journal2025https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x251365449preprint
AJG 2
Weight
0.71

What the paper says

Identifying structural change is a crucial step when analyzing time series and panel data. The longer the time span, the higher the likelihood that the model parameters have changed because of major disruptive events such as the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Detecting the existence of breaks and dating them is therefore necessary for not only estimation but also understanding drivers of change and their effect on relationships. In this article, we introduce a new community-contributed command called xtbreak , which provides researchers with a complete toolbox for analyzing multiple structural breaks in time series and panel data. xtbreak can detect the existence of breaks, determine their number and location, and provide break-date confidence intervals. We use xtbreak in examples to explore changes in the relationship between COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US using both aggregate and state-level data and in the relationship between approval ratings and consumer confidence using a panel of eight countries.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x251365449

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@article{jan2025,
  title        = {{Testing and estimating structural breaks in time series and panel data in Stata}},
  author       = {Jan Ditzen et al.},
  journal      = {Stata Journal},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x251365449},
}

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Evidence weight

0.71

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.84 × 0.4 = 0.34
M · momentum1.00 × 0.15 = 0.15
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.