Pesetsky's claim is based on the zero morpheme, but his argument cannot account for the -er nominals in (5) (See Chung 1998 for the detailed discussion).2 Bouchard 1995 just assumes that the E0 verbs have external argument without presenting evidence for the external argument of the EO verbs.
iwata 1995 presents some pieces of evidence (i.e., middle formation, -er nominals, -able adjectives) that the EO verbs are simple transitive verbs: the verbs have external and direct internal argument.