We study the effect of shadow banking, proxied by the share of net fees and commissions income to total revenue on the return and risk-adjusted return of Chinese commercial banks. We find that as banks tilt their product away from traditional lending business and toward fee-based business, or shadow banking business, its level of earning increase. In addition, the relation of shadow banking business and the risk-adjusted return, denoted by sharp ratio, is positive. Besides, we also discover

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... the variables we select, such as shadow banking ratio, capital adequacy ratio has more crucial impacts on risk-adjusted return than on ROAA. Together, our empirical evidence is broadly consistent with the notion that shadow banking is associated with higher return and risk of commercial banks.