Hal R. Varian

The work. Varian wrote the microeconomics textbook a generation learned from, then wrote the book on information goods with Carl Shapiro, then went to Google in 2002 and designed the economics of the ad auction that funds the modern internet. Versioning, bundling, lock-in, network effects, and the pricing of things that cost nothing to copy: he made those the standard vocabulary before anyone else had the data to check.

The case for. Clarivate paired him with Susan Athey under one citation, "pioneering analysis of the economics of information technology." If the committee wants to reward the digital economy, he is the founding text, and his Google years give the prize a story about theory that ran a trillion-dollar business. He is 79, and the committee has been known to move when the clock is loud.

The case against. Much of the most-cited work is a textbook and a trade book, and the committee prefers journal articles that other economists built on. His Google work is influential but partly proprietary. And the ad-auction lineage runs through Vickrey, Clarke and Groves, who are already in the record.

The KmikeyM angle. Varian's whole career is about pricing information and attention, and a publicly traded person is a business whose only product is those two things. He would understand the KmikeyM cap table faster than any other name on this board.