PPML package gravity with time fixed effects - r

Question

I'm trying to include time fixed effects (dummies for years generated with model.matrix) into a PPML regression in R.
Without time fixed effect the regression is:
require(gravity)
my_model <- PPML(y="v", dist="dist",
x=c("land","contig","comlang_ethno",
"smctry","tech","exrate"),
vce_robust=T, data=database)
I've tried to add command fe=c("year") within the PPML function but it doesn't work.
I'd appreciate any help on this.

Answer 1

I would comment on the previous answer but don't have enough reputation. The gravity model in your PPML command specifies v = dist × exp(land + contig + comlang_ethno + smctry + tech + exrate + TimeFE) = exp(log(dist) + land + contig + comlang_ethno + smctry + tech + exrate + TimeFE).
The formula inside of glm should have as its RHS the variables inside the exponential, because it represents the linear predictor produced by the link function (the Poisson default for which is natural log). So in sum, your command should be
glm(v ~ log(dist) + land + contig + comlang_ethno + smctry + tech + exrate + factor(year),
family='quasipoisson')
and in particular, you need to have distance in logs on the RHS (unlike the previous answer).

Answer 2

Just make sure that year is a factor, than you can just use the plain-and-simple glm-function as
glm(y ~ dist + year, family = "quasipoisson")
which gives you the results with year as dummies/fixed effects. The robust SE are then calculated with
lmtest::coeftest(EstimationResults.PPML, vcov=sandwich::vcovHC(model.PPML, "HC1"))
The PPML function does nothing more, it just isn't very flexible.

Answer 3

Alternatively to PPML and glm, you can also solve your problem using the function femlm (from package FENmlm) which deals with fixed-effect estimation for maximum likelihood models.
The two main advantages of function femlm are:
you can add as many fixed-effects as you want, and they are dealt with separately leading to computing times without comparison to glm (especially when fixed-effects contain many categories)
standard-errors can be clustered with intuitive commands
Here's an example regarding your problem (with just two variables and the year fixed-effects):
library(FENmlm)
# (default family is Poisson, 'pipe' separates variables from fixed-effects)
res = femlm(v ~ log(dist) + land | year, base)
summary(res, se = "cluster")
This code estimates the coefficients of variables log(dist) and land with year fixed-effects; then it displays the coefficients table with clustered standard-errors (w.r.t. year) for the two variables.
Going beyond your initial question, now assume you have a more complex case with three fixed-effects: country_i, country_j and year. You'd write:
res = femlm(v ~ log(dist) + land | country_i + country_j + year, base)
You can then easily play around with clustered standard-errors:
# Cluster w.r.t. country_i (default is first cluster encountered):
summary(res, se = "cluster")
summary(res, se = "cluster", cluster = "year") # cluster w.r.t. year cluster
# Two-way clustering:
summary(res, se = "twoway") # two-way clustering w.r.t. country_i & country_j
# two way clustering w.r.t. country_i & year:
summary(res, se = "twoway", cluster = c("country_i", "year"))
For more information on the package, the vignette can be found at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/FENmlm/vignettes/FENmlm.html.