How to access the datasets made available here?

Background

My time as a research scholar has taught me that data is very important for any research project. I have struggled quite a bit in collecting and cleaning up data and have realised that data availability and quality is a serious concern for many researchers, especially those from emerging countries such as mine (I am from India). As such, I have decided to make a few datasets that I have created, collected or curated available for download here as CSV and DTA (Stata) files. I am yet to decide whether I will put paywalls on some of them. For now, everything is free, and my goal is to keep it that way until (if at all) this project gains traction.

My plan is to provide a detailed breakdown on the methodologies followed for creating or cleaning up the datasets available here. However, my bandwidth is severely constrained for most of this year (and probably the next). As such, for now, I'll just focus on making these datasets available. My hope (at least until I write the data collection/clean-up methodology posts) is that the details provided here will be enough for an eager replicator to create an identical dataset from scratch.

I know that there are open platforms that offer the tools required to do something similar (OSF being a case in point). However, I have never used these platforms and have very little experience with their workings. Additionally, I want to have more control over what I make accessible and when. Hence, I decided to take the (easier) route of making these datasets available here, on my website.

With these points out of the way, lets get to the meat of this post. This post serves two purposes. First, it indexes all the datasets that are available for download on this website. Second, it provides a quick guide on how to access these datasets from Stata (directly).

Index of datasets

S. No.	Dataset name	Stata command	Availability
1	Annual Corporate Expenditure on Environment Protection	clear use "https://www.padmanav.com/_files/ugd/5d5174_ba21ee06bf3847b284c1b274855dac5d.csv?dn=corpenvexp.dta"	Free (created from MOSPI, Government of India data) corpenvexp.csv Download CSV • 8KB

How to load these files on Stata?

The dataset files made available here should work with any version of Stata starting with version 14. Accessing these datasets is very simple and should take no more than two steps.

Step 1: Type 'clear' in the command box. This clears the dataset currently loaded in memory (save any data in memory before typing this command).

Step 1

Step 2: Refer the 'Stata command' column of the 'Index of datasets' table above and type in the 'use' command in the command box. For instance, to load the 'Annual Corporate Expenditure on Environment Protection' dataset, type in 'use "https://www.padmanav.com/_files/ugd/5d5174_ba21ee06bf3847b284c1b274855dac5d.csv?dn=corpenvexp.dta" '.

Step 2

And that's it. The dataset you choose will be downloaded to your computer and loaded on Stata (give it some time for larger datasets).

Dataset loaded! Hurray!

If, on the other hand, you want to download the dataset in CSV format, simply click on the download button in the 'Availability' column in the 'Index of datasets' above and it should download to your computer.

Last updated: 12 June 2025