Abstract
This paper examines market power and efficiency in Indian banking using a unified theoretical framework based on the primal approach. Empirical results show that due to high level of concentration, large banks hold the capacity to impose higher prices, particularly on advances, and enjoy significant market power. Indian banks, particularly Indian private and foreign banks, are operating below their efficient scale and cost savings can be obtained by increasing their size of operations. The impact of financial deregulation led to a decline in average markup of banks initially, but this trend got reversed in 2002. The increasing trend of market power is mostly determined by bank size. Large banks enjoy greater market power due to either cost advantages or to their capacity to impose higher prices. Lower marginal cost and higher return of the so-called efficient structure have helped the large banks to maintain higher efficiency level. Finally, higher market power was also reflected in higher profit.
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Notes
What we call the “Schumpeterian” hypothesis is of course a simplification of Schumpeter’s theory. In fact, he did not claim that monopolies are preferable to perfect competition. Instead he suggested a deeper analysis of the dynamic aspect of competition as economic development might benefit from some degree of monopoly power.
Kutlu and Sickles (2012) consider a dynamic competition model in which market power is modeled via the conduct parameter.
The UK’s Independent Commission on Banking was set up in 2010 to consider reforms to promote financial stability and competition. Comments and criticism on the Commission’s interim report released in May 2011 are available at http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6509.
The All-India Rural Survey Committee (Reserve Bank of India 1954) observed that out of the total borrowings of Rs.7500 million for the cultivators in 1951–1952, agriculturalist money lenders and professional money lenders accounted for 24.9 and 44.8 %, respectively.
Since the departure from the optimality condition can occur not only due to non-competitive behavior but also due to regulatory constraints, it is not guaranteed that markup will be always positive.
We show this explicitly in Appendix 1 under profit maximization behavioral assumption.
If the monopoly pricing rule (\(\hbox {MR} = \hbox {MC} \Rightarrow {P} > \hbox {MC} \Rightarrow {R/C} > E_{cy} \Rightarrow {L}>0\)) is not imposed in estimation, there is no guarantee that the computed values of L from above will be positive for all producers.
This concept is used to measure returns to scale (RTS) which for a single output is \(1/\frac{\partial \ln C}{\partial \ln y}\) and for multiple output case \(RTS=(\mathop \sum \nolimits _m \frac{\partial \ln C}{\partial \ln y_m })^{-1}=(\mathop \sum \nolimits _m Ecy_m)^{-1}=Ec_y ^{-1}\).
It is worth noting that even if one assumes that producers are monopolists and they maximize profit, it is not guaranteed that \(p_m >\hbox {MC}_m \) for all m, especially if there are cross-subsidizations (see Appendix 1). Thus, it is not guaranteed that \(\mathop \sum \nolimits _m E_{cy_m } =E_{cy} <R/C \quad \Rightarrow {L}>0.\) Note that here we are not explicitly assuming monopoly output markets and imposing profit maximizing behavior on the producers. Thus, markups in our case, at least in some output markets might not be positive. It is also possible that L is not positive, at least for some banks.
Financial year for Indian banks runs from April 1 to March 31.
Unlike the consumer price-based inflation measure used in most countries, inflation in India based on wholesale price index is closely monitored and is largely used for policy making.
It worth noting that estimated markup might also reflect regulatory constraints, especially for state-owned banks. If state-owned banks are not allowed to charge a price that equates \(\hbox {MR}=\hbox {MC}\), the markup will be less than optimal. Given that markup for state-owned banks are consistently lower, we cannot rule out the possibility that the markups for at least state-owned banks are not true markups. Furthermore, if the regulated price is set too low, it might show up as negative markup which is not possible theoretically. Note that any loss by the state-owned banks is borne by the government and therefore low or even negative markup cannot be regarded as something odd.
The average markup in investments is estimated to be negative (marginally below zero) over the years. For reasons of parsimony, the same is not reported here.
It is possible to estimate efficiency from \(E[\exp (-u_{it}|e_it)]\) which is bounded between 0 and 1.
This nonparametric test for equality of multivariate densities comprised continuous and categorical data. Here categorical data consist of ownerships: SOBs, private and foreign. This test was performed using the npdeneqtest function of np package in R (Racine 2012). Under the null of equality, the test statistic \({T}_{{n}} \sim \) N(0, 1).
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Monopoly pricing
In a single output case, under monopoly, \(P>\hbox {MC}\). However, if there are multiple outputs, \(p_m >\hbox {MC}_m \) might not hold for all m, even under monopoly especially if there is cross-subsidization. To see it formally, assume that \(y_1 ({p_1, p_2 }),y_2 ({p_1, p_2 })\) are the demand functions for outputs \(y_1 \hbox { and }y_2\). Define profit as \(\pi =p_1 \times y_1 \left( {p_1, p_2 } \right) +p_2 \times y_2 \left( {p_1, p_2 } \right) -C\left( {w, y_1, y_2 } \right) \), where \(C\left( {w,y_1 ,y_2 } \right) \) is the cost function. The first-order conditions are:
From (i) \((P_1 -\hbox {MC}_1) \frac{\partial y_1 }{\partial p_1 }=-y_1 -\left( {p_2 -\hbox {MC}_2 } \right) \frac{\partial y_2 }{\partial p_1 }\)
where \(\eta _1 =-\frac{\partial y_1 }{\partial p_1 }\frac{p_1 }{y_1 }>0\) is the price elasticity of demand. If outputs \(y_1\) and \(y_2\) are complements then \(\frac{\partial y_2 }{\partial p_1 }<0.\) Thus, even if markup in \(y_2\) is positive, i.e., \((P_2 -\hbox {MC}_2)>0,\) markup in \(y_1\) can be negative if the complementarity is strong (i.e., \(\frac{\partial y_2 }{\partial p_1 }\) is a large negative number). Similarly, \(P_2 -\hbox {MC}_2 \gtrless 0.\)
Appendix 2
See Table 5.
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Das, A., Kumbhakar, S.C. Markup and efficiency of Indian banks: an input distance function approach. Empir Econ 51, 1689–1719 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-015-1062-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-015-1062-4