Int. J. Business Excellence, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010 65 Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Malmquist productivity and efficiency analysis for banking industry in India Seema Sharma* Room no. 503, Department of Management Studies, Vishwakarma Bhawan, Shaheed Jeet Singh Marg, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, 110016, India Fax: 91-11-26862620 E-mail: seemash@dms.iitd.ac.in *Corresponding author Sanjeev Gupta Department of Humanities and Management, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, 14011, Punjab, India E-mail: sanjeeveco@yahoo.co.in E-mail: guptas@nitj.ac.in Abstract: This paper attempts to analyse the productivity and efficiency growth pattern of Indian banking industry during the post-liberalisation era. Malmquist data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been used to estimate the different performance measures viz., productivity growth, technological change, technical efficiency and scale efficiency for the period 1996–2006. Results indicate that during the study period, this industry experienced regress in technological progress along with stagnation in technical efficiency. Some progress is reported in scale economies but the dominating technological regress resulted in productivity decline. From the group wise analysis, nationalised sector came out to be the leader in case of scale economies whereas private sector emerged as the best performer in technical efficiency. None of the groups could experience positive productivity growth over the study period. Keywords: Malmquist data envelopment analysis; DEA; technical change; technical efficiency; scale efficiency; total factor productivity; TFP; liberalisation; banking sector reforms; India. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Sharma, S. and Gupta, S. (2010) ‘Malmquist productivity and efficiency analysis for banking industry in India’, Int. J. Business Excellence, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp.65–76. Biographical notes: Seema Sharma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Studies in Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD). She received her PhD in Economics from IITD. Her areas of interest include economics and statistical analysis. The major area of research, among others, centres on productivity and efficiency analysis. She has participated and presented her research in many national and international conferences in India and abroad. She has published her research in national and international refereed journals. She has travelled to several countries such as USA, Japan, France, Australia, Thailand and Czech Republic.