How Far Ownership and Coronavirus Affected Bootstrapped Efficiency: Empirical Study of Indian Banks

During last two years entire world experienced an unprecedented phase owing to the pandemic. To devastate the economy, Coronavirus gradually took a toll on almost every sector. The freakish impact of pandemic not only influenced the financial performance of the sector but also the level of their operating efficiency. Being a forefront of economy, banking sector also experienced oscillations during last few years. In this context, the present paper examines the efficiency level of Indian domestic banks over last three years from 2018 to 2021 by applying Bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis model. The efficiency scores of banks have been compared by using Mann-Whitney U test to investigate any possible impact of ownership as well as outbreak of coronavirus over banking efficiency. The analysis of efficiency scores revealed that banks exhibited a decline in the mean efficiency scores after the onset of coronavirus on January, 2020. However, as a sign of recovery, an increase in the mean efficiency scores was observed during 2020-2021, The results witness significant impact of ownership as well as Covid-19 over banking efficiency. The findings proclaim that public sector banks have been proven relatively more efficient than private sector banks. Further, the results indicate a significant impact of coronavirus on the efficiency of public sector as well as private sector banks in India.