To be fair in the same breadth you could say a thinner one means more bounces in a quicker space of time. I think with several inner barrel manufacturers making wider barrels there has to be something in it. Why bother if not? Add to that the large amount of people switching to orga barrels and others and having good results there's clearly some benefit. It's likely both achieve a similar outcome through different means if anything, neither is likely to be hugely worse or else so many people wouldn't use them.
With simple logic tighter is better but i dont understand why you can't believe in the air cushion proposal, it's more than plausible, it's not like a bb holds much mass . just depends which theory you subscribe to but I highly doubt people who've spent significant amounts of money on high end stuff like ptws and p*'s run wide bores over others for no reason.
Or it could all make no difference and it's literally just the quality of the components that make the difference