A little additional food for thought on the "bigger is better" perspective:
If we are talking about comparing relative sizes of defensive hollow point rounds, then
expansion is obviously the critical factor, not the comparative width of the unfired round.
With that agreed upon, let's look at what "good expansion" looks like in 9mm vs. .45 ACP:
Good expansion for a 9mm HP is typically somewhere between .60" and .72"
Good expansion for a .45 ACP HP is typically between .70" to .82".
(
source)
So, with ideal expansion, we are basically looking at a difference of 1/10" of an inch,
at most, And that's only if you're comparing the best expanding 9mm hollow points to the best expanding .45 ACP hollow points. With some ammo choices, the difference will be even less than that.
However, it's also possible to choose a 9mm hollow point that expands
more than a poor performing .45 ACP round. Thus, .45 ACP isn't always "bigger" - that's an assumption being made. In fact, there are some 9mm rounds that will expand to .70" and some .45 ACP rounds that don't consistently expand much beyond .50". On top of that, keep in mind that even with the highest quality, best expanding rounds of either caliber, ideal expansion still doesn't happen sometimes, for a variety of different reasons.
So, it really isn't as clean-cut as just saying, ".45 ACP is bigger than 9mm" when we look more closely at actual hollow point expansion. The reality is that there is actually a fair bit of overlap in the terminal size of both rounds, and it's entirely possible to select a 9mm round that consistently expands more than some .45 ACP rounds.
Beyond that, whether a maximum of 1/10" of an inch in difference really translates into a higher percentage of "stops" is also highly debatable, and to date, I haven't come across any definitive data that proves that to be the case. The Ellefritz study clearly concludes exactly the opposite..