عملکرد مالی بانک های تجاری در دوره پس از اصلاحات: شواهد بیشتر از بنگلادش Financial performance of commercial banks in the post-reform era: Further evidence from Bangladesh

1. Introduction The global banking industry has experienced remarkable changes in recent decades due to international integration of financial markets, deregulation and innovations of technology in banking services. These have created both opportunities for growth and challenges for banks to remain profitable in the current increasingly competitive environment. A profitable and enduring banking sector helps a country to withstand negative economic shocks (e.g., financial crisis) and contributes to the stability of the whole financial system. Research on financial performance of banks typically focuses on the analysis of determinants of bank profitability. Studies concerning bank profitability to date, including Staikouras and Wood (2004), Athanasoglou et al. (2008), Garcia-Herrero et al. (2009), Goddard et al. (2004), Short (1979) and Bourke (1989) have examined the effect of bank-specific (e.g., capital ratio, bank size etc.), industry-related (e.g., concentration, ownership etc.) and macroeconomic (e.g., inflation, GDP growth etc.) determinants on bank performance. More recently, Mia and Ben Soltane (2016) use panel data from 50 South Asian microfinance institutions to show improved annual average productivity by 2.1% due to financial, economic and institutional reforms. Also, Cox and Wang (2014) attribute US bank failures during the period from 2007 to 2010 to ‘poor investment decisions and large exposure to systemic risk channels’. However, studies examining the impact of financial reform policies on profitability are very few, especially for a developing country like Bangladesh. The banking sector in Bangladesh has undergone a series of legal, policy and institutional reforms since 1980s. Bangladesh implemented reform programs largely during 1990-1995, though some reform initiatives occurred on ad hoc basis as early as 1983. Although it has been more than two decades since implementation of these reform measures, no research has been done so far to examine whether the banking sector has become more or less profitable due to these reforms. Therefore, it is timely to evaluate the financial performance of the banking sector in Bangladesh in terms of profitability measures before, during and after financial liberalization. Such evaluation should also help policy makers to understand the limitations of the reform policies taken and formulate accommodative policies in light of the evolving contemporary challenges, especially due to the recent global financial crisis.