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While the Noble Quran dictates the prohibition of interest, conventional banks promote Islamic banking by opening Islamic banking windows. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate the perceived gaps between managers and clients in Islamic marketing and banking, focusing on conventional banks’ Islamic banking windows.

Guided by a qualitative approach, semi-structured personal interviews and observations served as the data collection methods, involving 25 banks and 50 respondents in 3 different districts, namely, Shirajganj, Rajshahi and Chapainawabganj of Bangladesh from January to October 2023. The data were analysed using ATLAS.ti 2023 to explore codes and quotations derived from 14 interview questions. Further, ATLAS.ti 2023 facilitated synthesizing content, concepts, code occurrence, network analysis and thematic analysis.

Islamic and non-Islamic banks use Quranic verses, hadiths (prophetic traditions), images of mosques, the Kaaba and Arabic texts as Islamic marketing tools. These spiritual, divine and prescriptive tools are associated with Islamic banking. However, conventional banks receive criticism for having separate Islamic banking windows to serve religiously conscious clients, which generates tension among clients and bank managers.

The findings can theoretically assist academics in examining conventional banks’ Islamic marketing and banking practices, opening Islamic banking windows. Importantly, Shariah boards can play policy roles in safeguarding the function of Islamic marketing and banking. Managers can use the findings to anticipate client perceptions and enhance Islamic marketing and banking strategies. Likewise, the social implications include the explicit stance of Shariah to mitigate the mixture of halal and haram banking.

This pioneering study explores the perspectives of Islamic banking windows by non-Islamic banks. The combination of Islamic marketing and banking is a noteworthy novelty in this study and deserves recognition for its unique contribution to halal marketing and finance.

This paper aims to examine the factors that contribute to the external debt growth in Ghana.

The study adopts the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and the error correction model (ECM) to establish the short-run and long-run relationships between the dependent variable (external debt) and the independent variables (debt service, exchange rate, gross domestic product, government expenditure, import and trade openness), using a time series data spanning from 1990 to 2019.

The results indicate that debt service, GDP, government expenditure and trade openness have a positive and significant relationship with external debt, while import and exchange rates have a negative relationship with external debt in the long run. In the short run, debt service, import, exchange rate and trade openness have a positive and significant relationship with external debt, while GDP has a negative relationship with external debt.

The study found that variables such as government expenditure, debt service and import contribute significantly to the nation’s external debt stock. These findings suggest that policymakers should focus on prioritising and cutting down expenditure in their quest to curtail the debt menace facing the nation. Since existing debt service has the tendency of influencing debt stock, it is recommended that government should reduce borrowing in order avoid debt trap. Home-grown policies to reduce imports must also be encouraged. As these drivers of external debt are tackled head-on, Ghana can be rightly positioned to record lower levels of public debt and subsequently reap the benefits of economic growth.

The study adds to the public debt literature, specifically addressing the idiosyncratic determinants of external debt within the Ghanaian context.

This study aims to test the dynamic impact of public debt and economic growth on newly democratized African countries (South Africa and Namibia) and compare the findings with those of newly democratized European countries (Germany and Ukraine) during the period 1990–2022.

The methodology involves three stages: identifying the appropriate transition variable, assessing the linearity between public debt and economic growth and selecting the order m of the transition function. The linearity test helps identify the nature of relationships between public debt and economic growth. The wild cluster bootstrap-Lagrange Multiplier test is used to evaluate the model’s appropriateness. All these tests would be executed using the Lagrange Multiplier type of test.

The results signify the policy switch, as the authors find that the relationship between public debt and economic growth is characterized by two transitions that symbolize that the current stage of the relationship is beyond the U-shape; however, an S-shape. The results show that for newly democratized African countries, the threshold during the first waves was 50% of GDP, represented by a U-shape, which then transits to an inverted U-shape with a threshold of 65% of GDP. Then, for the European case, it was 60% of GDP, which is now 72% of GDP.

The findings suggest that an escalating level of public debt has a negative impact on economic growth; therefore, it is important to implement fiscal discipline, prioritize government spending and reduce reliance on debt financing. This can be achieved by focusing on revenue generation, implementing effective taxation policies, reducing wasteful expenditures and promoting investment and productivity-enhancing measures.

Luxury consumption has evolved, and two important reasons behind the change include globalization and the COVID-19 crisis. These factors have led to the rise of new luxury consumption, which is different from traditional luxury consumption. This study examines how consumers’ identities shape their intentions to consume traditional luxury and new luxury brands.

The theoretical underpinnings of the schema congruity theory and heuristic systematic framework were applied to understand the role of identities in determining consumers’ regulatory focus, price luxuriousness inference and preference for traditional and new luxury brands.

Findings suggest that the global identity of consumers shapes their promotion focus and price luxuriousness inferences. However, their local identities induce a prevention goal. Consumers with such a goal are unlikely to make price luxuriousness inferences. Further, these inferences lead to the choice of traditional luxury over new luxury brands. The results also establish the moderating effects of consumer flexibility.

The extant literature is inconclusive on the role of globalization in luxury consumption and ignores new luxury brands. The current study shows the impact of identities and regulatory focus on traditional and new luxury consumption. The findings also indicate consumers’ regulatory focus and price luxuriousness inference as the reasons behind the influence. The paper also implies that consumers open to renting, sharing or buying second-hand goods will prefer new luxury over traditional luxury brands.