> investments in phone service
no wonder Heckman and McFadden are getting the bankers' version of the Nobel prize.
But what are they really doing? Are they finding probabilistic ways of estimating massed aggregates of atomised commodity purchasers, or sellers of labour power as a commodity?
The contradictory paradox in this would be that such a method starts off with the quintessential atomised individual agents according to the ideal capitalist world view.
But by analysing aggregates of these citizens they have a tool for looking at the subtler psycho-social irregularities that affect real human beings who are actually social animals and not just fragmented individualistic consumers or producers.
Is their research, ironically, progressive from a radical economic viewpoint?
Chris Burford
London