In recent years a number of scholars have debated the economic efficiency of takeover-bid legislation and of permissible defensive tactics taken by the management of takeover target corporations. This article reviews and comments on this literature and draws attention to a number of empirical questions raised by the debate. It concludes that the important outstanding issues are: i) the degree to which takeover rules interfere with the deterrence of management inefficiency, and ii) the cost of allocating assets to their most highly-valued uses through competitive bidding as opposed to the likelihood and cost of retransfers of assets after takeovers without competitive bidding
