title: Adding dummy variables in panel linear model (regression) in R
body: <p>I have a categorical independent variable (with options of "yes" or "no") that I want to add to my panel linear model. According to the 
   answer here: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47820249/after-generating-dummy-variables">After generating dummy variables?</a>, the lm function automatically creates dummy variables for you for categorical variables.</p>
  
  <p>Does this mean that creating dummy variables through i.e. dummy.data.frame is unnecessary, and I can just add in my variable in the plm function and it will automatically be treated like a dummy variable (even if the data is not numerical)? And is this the same for the plm function?</p>
  
  <p>Also, I don't have much data to begin with. Would it hurt if I manually turned the data into numbers (i.e. "yes"=1, "no"=0) without creating a dummy variable?</p>