The current study examines the determinants of profitability of Indian commercial banks. The analysis is conducted over a period of 10 years in which the Indian banking sector has gone under different changes such as demonetization and issues related to banking sector sustainability and banking sector frauds. The analysis is based on balanced panel data over a period ranging from 2008 to 2017 for 69 commercial Indian banks. Profitability of Indian banks is measured by two proxies, namely, return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), whereas bank size, assets quality, capital adequacy, liquidity, operating efficiency, deposits, leverage, assets management, and the number of branches are used as bank‐specific factors. Further, a set of macroeconomic determinants such as gross domestic product, inflation rate, interest rate, exchange rate, financial crisis, and demonetization are used as independent variables. Stationary test along with pooled, fixed, random effect models and panel correction standard error are used in this study. The results revealed that bank size, the number of branches, assets management ratio, operational efficiency, and leverage ratio are the most important bank‐specific determinants that affect the profitability of Indian commercial banks as measured by ROA. Furthermore, among the bank‐specific determinants, the results revealed that bank size, assets management ratio, assets quality ratio, and liquidity ratio are found to have a significant positive impact on ROE. With regard to the macroeconomic determinants, the results revealed that the inflation rate, exchange rate, the interest rate, and demonization are found to have a significant impact on ROA. However, in the case of ROE, the results show that all macroeconomic determinants except demonization have a significant impact on the bank's profitability as measured by ROE.

This study aims at finding out the determinants of Indian commercial banks profitability. Profitability of Indian banks is measured by three important variables namely, Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE) and Net Interest Margin (NIM). The study also uses a set of independent variables such as bank-specific factors which include bank size, assets quality, capital adequacy, liquidity, operating efficiency, deposits, leverage, assets management and the number of branches. Pooled, fixed and random effects models and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) are built on panel data of 10 years for more than 60 commercial banks of India.The study also takes into account Gross Domestic Product (GDP), inflation rate, interest rate and exchange rate as macroeconomic determinants. The results of the study show that all bank-specific factors, except the number of branches, exhibited significant impacts on profitability as measured by NIM. The findings also show that all macroeconomic determinants used in the study are found to be significant with negative impacts on Indian commercial banks profitability. Furthermore, the results ABOUT THE AUTHORSEissa A. Al-Homaidi is currently a Ph.D. scholar in the Commerce Department, Aligarh Muslim University, India. His research interests include financial reporting, financial performance, disclosure, corporate governance and demonetization.Mosab I. Tabash is currently working as an

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