R - Plm and lm - Fixed effects - r

Question

I have a balanced panel data set, df, that essentially consists in three variables, A, B and Y, that vary over time for a bunch of uniquely identified regions. I would like to run a regression that includes both regional (region in the equation below) and time (year) fixed effects. If I'm not mistaken, I can achieve this in different ways:
lm(Y ~ A + B + factor(region) + factor(year), data = df)
or
library(plm)
plm(Y ~ A + B,
data = df, index = c('region', 'year'), model = 'within',
effect = 'twoways')
In the second equation I specify indices (region and year), the model type ('within', FE), and the nature of FE ('twoways', meaning that I'm including both region and time FE).
Despite I seem to be doing things correctly, I get extremely different results. The problem disappears when I do not consider time fixed effects - and use the argument effect = 'individual'.
What's the deal here? Am I missing something? Are there any other R packages that allow to run the same analysis?

Answer 1

Perhaps posting an example of your data would help answer the question. I am getting the same coefficients for some made up data. You can also use felm from the package lfe to do the same thing:
N <- 10000
df <- data.frame(a = rnorm(N), b = rnorm(N),
region = rep(1:100, each = 100), year = rep(1:100, 100))
df$y <- 2 * df$a - 1.5 * df$b + rnorm(N)
model.a <- lm(y ~ a + b + factor(year) + factor(region), data = df)
summary(model.a)
# (Intercept) -0.0522691 0.1422052 -0.368 0.7132
# a 1.9982165 0.0101501 196.866 <2e-16 ***
# b -1.4787359 0.0101666 -145.450 <2e-16 ***
library(plm)
pdf <- pdata.frame(df, index = c("region", "year"))
model.b <- plm(y ~ a + b, data = pdf, model = "within", effect = "twoways")
summary(model.b)
# Coefficients :
# Estimate Std. Error t-value Pr(>|t|)
# a 1.998217 0.010150 196.87 < 2.2e-16 ***
# b -1.478736 0.010167 -145.45 < 2.2e-16 ***
library(lfe)
model.c <- felm(y ~ a + b | factor(region) + factor(year), data = df)
summary(model.c)
# Coefficients:
# Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
# a 1.99822 0.01015 196.9 <2e-16 ***
# b -1.47874 0.01017 -145.4 <2e-16 ***

Answer 2

This does not seem to be a data issue.
I'm doing computer exercises in R from Wooldridge (2012) Introductory Econometrics. Specifically Chapter 14 CE.1 (data is the rental file at: https://www.cengage.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&product_isbn_issn=9781111531041)
I computed the model in differences (in Python)
model_diff = smf.ols(formula='diff_lrent ~ diff_lpop + diff_lavginc + diff_pctstu', data=rental).fit()
OLS Regression Results
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable: diff_lrent R-squared: 0.322
Model: OLS Adj. R-squared: 0.288
Method: Least Squares F-statistic: 9.510
Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2017 Prob (F-statistic): 3.14e-05
Time: 00:46:55 Log-Likelihood: 65.272
No. Observations: 64 AIC: -122.5
Df Residuals: 60 BIC: -113.9
Df Model: 3
Covariance Type: nonrobust
================================================================================
coef std err t P>|t| [0.025 0.975]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intercept 0.3855 0.037 10.469 0.000 0.312 0.459
diff_lpop 0.0722 0.088 0.818 0.417 -0.104 0.249
diff_lavginc 0.3100 0.066 4.663 0.000 0.177 0.443
diff_pctstu 0.0112 0.004 2.711 0.009 0.003 0.019
==============================================================================
Omnibus: 2.653 Durbin-Watson: 1.655
Prob(Omnibus): 0.265 Jarque-Bera (JB): 2.335
Skew: 0.467 Prob(JB): 0.311
Kurtosis: 2.934 Cond. No. 23.0
==============================================================================
Now, the PLM package in R gives the same results for the first-difference models:
library(plm) modelfd <- plm(lrent~lpop + lavginc + pctstu,
data=data,model = "fd")
No problem so far. However, the fixed effect reports different estimates.
modelfx <- plm(lrent~lpop + lavginc + pctstu, data=data, model =
"within", effect="time") summary(modelfx)
The FE results should not be any different. In fact, the Computer Exercise question is:
(iv) Estimate the model by fixed effects to verify that you get identical estimates and standard errors to those in part (iii).
My best guest is that I am miss understanding something on the R package.