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This paper investigates the effect of market structure, including some bank-specific variables and macroeconomic conditions, on the profitability of Indonesian Islamic rural banks. We apply the structure conduct performance (SCP) and the relative market power (RMP) hypothesis. Panel data comprising 142 Islamic rural banks from 2013Q1 to 2018Q4 are employed. This study breaks them apart, associated with the level of economic development consisting of Java as developed regions and outside Java as less developed regions. This study employs static and dynamic panel regression. The GMM method, however, is appropriate because of the dynamic nature of profitability. Our results confirm the SCP hypothesis and fail to support the RMP hypothesis. The higher market concentration allows Islamic rural banks to generate a significantly higher profit by conducting a collusive strategy. More interestingly, the collusive behavior may result in more profit for Islamic rural banks located in the developed regions than those in less developed regions. Evidence also highlights the importance of operating efficiency and impaired financing on profitability. High operating efficiency and low impaired financing can improve profit. Our results suggest that capitalizing market share by improving efficiency and optimizing financing contracts between PLS and non-PLS contracts also improve profit.
Widarjono et al. (Thu,) studied this question.