Do public sector banks promote regional growth? Evidence from an emerging economy

Abstract

A large literature exists on the relationship between financial development and economic growth. The role of government and public banks in building this relationship has however, remained contentious. In this study in a sub-national level of analysis in the context of large emerging economy, India we raise the question what is the relative impact of public banks in economic growth in the lagging regions vis-à-vis leading regions? Do they matter more than the private and foreign banks? To address these problems, we apply dynamic GMM panel estimator on an unbalanced panel dataset drawn from 25 Indian states covering period 1996/97 to 2008/09. Although our study is in the Indian context, it is relevant for developing countries for mainly two reasons: government ownership of banks has been widely prevalent in developing countries and in many large countries in a federation set-up inter-state differences may exist with multiple ownership of the financial sector.