F&A area researchers examine public sector bank performance during COVID-19

2 July, 2025, Bengaluru: A research paper authored by Doctoral Programme scholar M. Joel Christopher, in collaboration with IIMB faculty members Prof. Sankarshan Basu, Prof. Nitin Vishen, and Prof. Abhinav Anand from the Finance & Accounting area, has won the Best Paper Award (First Prize) in the Financial Markets track at the 7th International Conference on Financial Markets & Corporate Finance (ICFMCF 2025), hosted by IIT Kharagpur on 28 and 29 June 2025 as part of the PAN-IIT initiative.

Titled ‘Banking Against the Odds: Performance and Lending Efficiency of Government Banks During Crisis’, the authors challenge long-standing assumptions about the inefficiency of public sector banks. Using a rigorous difference-in-differences analysis, the award-winning study investigates the response of Indian banks during the COVID-19 period and contributes to the broader policy discourse on public sector banking and their crisis response.

ICFMCF, a premier academic platform under the PAN-IIT banner, is jointly organised by the leading management schools of the IIT system, including IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT(ISM) Dhanbad, and IIT Roorkee.