The Fermi hypernetted-chain theory is applied to study the half-filled state of the fractional quantum Hall effect in the thermodynamic limit. We study in detail the radial distribution function, the correlation energy, and the quasiparticle-quasihole excitation spectrum of an unprojected Fermi wave function of the form (Formula presented) a possible candidate to describe the half-filled state. Adopting a technique originating from nuclear physics, we compute the effective mass of the fermion excitations near the Fermi surface for this wave function. We find it to be exactly the bare mass of the electron, in accordance with the mean field approximation of not imposing the lowest Landau level constraint. Similar calculations were performed on other related wave functions, which, based on the composite fermion picture, describe the half-filled state of the electrons as a limit of infinite-filled composite fermion Landau levels. © 1998 The American Physical Society.