The OUTEVENT= data set is used to output event-oriented time series data. Events occurring at discrete points in time are recorded along with the date they occurred. Only CRSP stock files contain event-oriented time series data. For all other types of files, the OUTEVENT= option is ignored.

The OUTEVENT= data set contains the following variables:

• the BY variables, which identify cross-sectional dimensions when the input data file contains time series replicated for different values of the BY variables. Use the BY variables in a WHERE statement to process the OUTEVENT= data set by cross sections. The order in which BY variables are defined in the OUTEVENT= data set corresponds to the order in which the data file is sorted.

• DATE, a SAS date-, time- or datetime-valued variable that reports the discrete time periods at which events occurred. The format of the DATE variable depends on the INTERVAL= option, and should accurately report the date based on the SAS YEARCUTOFF option. The default value for YEARCUTOFF is 1920. The dates used can span up to 250 years.

• EVENT, a character variable that contains the event group name. The EVENT variable is another cross-sectional variable.

• the event variables, which are included in the OUTEVENT= data set only if they have data in at least one selected BY group, and are not discarded by a KEEPEVENT or DROPEVENT statement

Note that each event group contains a nonoverlapping set of event variables; therefore, the OUTEVENT= data set is very sparse. You should exercise care when selecting event variables to be included in the OUTEVENT= data set.

Also note that even though the OUTEVENT= data set cannot contain any periodic time series variables, the OUT= data set can contain event variables if they are explicitly specified in a KEEP statement. In summary, you can specify event variables in a KEEP statement, but you cannot specify periodic time series variables in a KEEPEVENT statement.

While variable selection for OUT= and OUTEVENT= data sets are controlled by a different set of statements (KEEP versus KEEPEVENT or DROP versus DROPEVENT), cross-section and range selections are controlled by the same statements, so in summary, the WHERE and the RANGE statements are effective for both output data sets.