Did regulatory compliance with governance standards really enhance the profit efficiency of Indian banks?

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether regulatory compliance with governance norms explains the profit efficiency of Indian banks. Using a data envelopment analysis approach, a compliance index is built on 48 governance norms defined on board, audit, risk, remuneration, shareholder relationship, and disclosures. The study also identifies the position of banks on a 2 × 2 matrix based on their governance and profit efficiency levels. The econometric analysis establishes that mere regulatory compliance with governance codes does not necessarily ensure higher profit efficiency. Instead, the panel quantile estimates uncover evidence of a positive externality to governance compliance for banks with low profit efficiency levels.KEYWORDS: Systemically important banksbank governanceprofit efficiencydynamic panel modelspanel quantileemerging economydata envelopment analysisIndian banksJEL: G21G28G38 Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17520843.2023.2213943.Additional informationNotes on contributorsRachita GulatiRachita Gulati is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, Uttarakhand. She received the Subir Chowdhury Visiting Fellowship 2017–2018 from the India Observatory, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, London, UK. Her teaching and research interests relate to applied econometrics, banking efficiency, financial institutions, financial stability, corporate governance, and efficiency and productivity analysis. She has been working and gaining experience in this area for the past 14 years and has formulated several mathematical and non-parametric benchmarking models to measure efficiency performance, which she has applied to banks, microfinance institutions, investors, insurers, etc. She has published more than two dozen articles in top-ranked journals, including Omega, Quarterly Review of Finance and Economics, Economic Modelling, Australian Economic Papers, The North American Journal of Finance and Accounting, among others. She has worked on project studies awarded/sponsored by the Reserve Bank of India, the State Finance Commission of Haryana, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, and the ICSSR, among others. She is the co-author of a book, ‘Deregulation and Efficiency of Indian Banks’ (Springer). She is also a member of several national and international associations, including the International Society of Efficiency and Productivity Analysis, the Indian Econometric Society, the International Corporate Governance Society, the International Econometric Society, etc.