The goal of this book is to assess the efficacy of India's financial
deregulation programme by analyzing the developments in cost efficiency
and total factor productivity growth across different ownership types
and size classes in the banking sector over the post-deregulation years.
The work also gauges the impact of inclusion or exclusion of a proxy for
non-traditional activities on the cost efficiency estimates for Indian
banks, and ranking of distinct ownership groups. It also investigates
the hitherto neglected aspect of the nature of returns-to-scale in the
Indian banking industry. In addition, the work explores the key
bank-specific factors that explain the inter-bank variations in
efficiency and productivity growth. Overall, the empirical results of
this work allow us to ascertain whether the gradualist approach to
reforming the banking system in a developing economy like India has
yielded the most significant policy goal of achieving efficiency and
productivity gains. The authors believe that the findings of this book
could give useful policy directions and suggestions to other developing
economies that have embarked on a deregulation path or are contemplating
doing so.