This practice was, in any case, a long way removed from the idea of the Landesbanken, in terms of their lending policy, making a contribution to the development of their own federal state. The business policy of such Landesbanken had moved a long way from the principle of decentralisation. This explains why these institutions were hit particularly hard by the financial crisis.
It has enabled an analysis of macro issues to be conducted by aggregating from the micro data in a way that simply wasn’t possible before. In the end macro behaviour is, of course, purely the summation of a whole set of micro decisions. The HILDA survey is very much in the tradition of Ronald Henderson.