George Stigler, Jesse W. Markham, Joe S. Bain, and many others participated. No consensus has yet been reached over which of many potential criteria should be used to judge competition to be effective, but as an alternative to identifying specific structural criteria by which to constitute effectiveness or workability, Jesse W. Markham suggested the following definition:

An industry may be judged to be workably competitive when, after the structural characteristics of its market and the dynamic forces that shaped them have been thoroughly examined, there is no clearly indicated change than can be effected through public policy measures that would result in greater social gains than social losses.