Timothy Bresnahan

The work. The "new empirical industrial organization" before it had a name. Bresnahan showed how to read market power out of demand data without ever seeing a cost figure, built the entry-threshold models with Peter Reiss that count how many firms a town can support, and wrote the general-purpose-technology paper with Trajtenberg that explains why steam, electricity and computers each took decades to pay off.

The case for. If the committee gives an empirical IO prize, it wants three names, and Bresnahan is the one who started the program Berry and Pakes finished. Nicholas Decker and Maia Mindel both put him in their three.

The case against. He is not on either betting market, Clarivate has never named him, and the BLP trio already fills three chairs without him.

The KmikeyM angle. Bresnahan-Reiss asks how many sellers a market can hold. Mike's answer for the market in himself has been one, for nearly twenty years, with a very long line of buyers.